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STEPHEN ARCHER 


AND OTHER TALES 


BY 

GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D. 

II 

AUTHOR OF “DAVID ELGINBROD,” “ROBERT FALCONER,"' “ALEC FORBES OP 
HOWGLEN,” “annals OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD,” ETC., ETC. 


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PHILADELPHIA : 

DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER, 

1022 Market Street. 












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CONTENTS 


FAfiB 

STEPHEN ARCHEB * 1 

THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHBIST 26 

THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS ... 79 

THE BUTCHER’S BILLS 148 

PORT IN A STORM 204 


IF I HAD A FATHER 


#•# 


••• 


••f 


226 


' • 








STEPHEN AECHEE 


Stephen Akcher was a stationer, bookseller, 
and newsmonger in one of the suburbs oJf 
London. The newspapers hung in a sort 
of rack at his door, as if for the convenience 
of the public to help themselves in passing. 
On his counter lay penny weeklies and books 
coming out in parts, amongst which the 
Family Herald was in force, and the London 
Journal not to be found. I had occasion once 
to try the extent of his stock, for I required 
a good many copies of one of Shakspere’s 
plays — at a penny, if I could find such. He 
shook his head, and told me he could not 
encourage the sale of such productions. This 
pleased me ; for, although it was of little 
consequence what he thought concerning 
Shakspere, it was of the utmost import that 
he should prefer principle to pence. So I 
loitered in the shop, looking for something 
to buy ; but there was nothing in the way 
of literature : his whole stock, as far as I 
could see, consisted of little religious volumes 
of gay binding and inferior print ; he had 

B 


2 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


nothing even from the Halifax press. He 
was a good-looking fellow, about thirty, with 
dark eyes, overhanging brows that indicated 
thought, mouth of character, and no smile. 
I was interested in him. 

I asked if he would mind getting the plays 
I wanted. He said he would rather not. I 
hade him good morning. 

More than a year after, I saw him again. 
I had passed his shop many times, but this 
morning, I forget why, I went in. I could 
hardly recall the former appearance of the 
man, so was it swallowed up in a new ex- 
pression. His face was alive, and his 
behaviour courteous. A similar change had 
passed upon his stock. There was Punch 
and Fun amongst the papers, and tenpenny 
Shaksperes on the counter, printed on straw- 
paper, with ugly wood-cuts. The former 
class of publications had not vanished, but 
was mingled with cheap editions of some 
worthy of being called books. 

“ I see you have changed your mind since 
I saw you last,” I said. 

“ You have the advantage of me, sir,” he 
returned. “ I did not know you were a 
customer.” 

“ Not much of that,” I replied ; ‘‘ only in 
intention. I wanted you to get me some 
penny Shaksperes, and you would not take 
the order.” 

“ Oh ! I think I remember,” he answered, 
with just a trace of confusion ; adding, with 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


3 


a smile, “ I’m married now ; ” and I fancied 
I could read a sort of triumph over his former 
self. 

I laughed, of course — the best expression 
of sympathy at hand — and, after a little talk, 
left the shop, resolved to look in again soon. 
Before a month was over, I had made the 
acquaintance of his wife too, and between 
them learned so much of their history as to 
be able to give the following particulars 
concerning it. 

Stephen Archer was one of the deacons, 
rather a young one perhaps, of a dissenting 
congregation. The chapel was one of the 
oldest in the neighbourhood, quite triumphant 
in ugliness, but possessed of a history which 
gave it high rank with those who frequented 
it. The sacred odour of the names of pastors 
who had occupied its pulpit, lingered about 
its walls — names unknown beyond its pre- 
cincts, but starry in the eyes of those whose 
world lay within its tabernacle. People gene- 
rally do not know what a power some of these 
small conventicles are in the education of the 
world. If only as an outlet for the energies 
of men of lowly education and position, who 
in connexion with most of the churches of 
the Establishment would find no employment, 
they are of inestimable value. 

To Stephen Archer, for instance, when I 
saw him first, his chapel was the sole door 
out of the common world into the infinite. 
When he entered, as certainly did the awe 


4 


STEPHEN AHCHER. 


and the hush of the sacred place overshadow 
his spirit as if it had been a gorgeous 
cathedral-house borne aloft upon the joined 
|)alms of its Gothic arches. The Master is 
truer than men think, and the power of His 
presence, as Browning has so well set forth 
in his “ Christmas Eve,” is where two or 
three are gathered in His name. And inas- 
much as Stephen was not a man of imagina- 
tion, he had the greater need of the undefined 
influences of the place. 

He had been chief in establishing a small 
mission amongst the poor in the neighbour- 
hood, with the working of which he occupied 
the greater part of his spare time. I will 
not venture to assert that his mind was pure 
from the ambition of gathering from these 
to swell the flock at the little chapel ; nay, 
I will not even assert that there never arose 
a suggestion of the enemy that the pence of 
these rescued brands might alleviate the 
burden upon the heads and shoulders of the 
poorly prosperous caryatids of his church ; 
but I do say that Stephen was an honest man 
in the main, ever ready to grow honester : 
and who can demand more ? 

One evening, as he was putting up the 
shutters of his window, his attention was 
arrested by a shuffling behind him. Glancing 
round, he set down the shutter, and the next 
instant boxed a boy’s ears, who ran away 
howling and mildly excavating his eyeballs, 
while a young, pale-faced woman, with the 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


5 


largest black eyes he had ever seen, expostu- 
lated with him on the proceeding. 

“ Oh, sir ! ” she said, “ he wasn’t troubling 
you.” There was a touch of indignation in 
the tone. 

“ I’m sorry I can’t return the compliment,” 
said Stephen, rather illogically. “ If I’d ha’ 
known you liked to have your shins kicked, 
I might ha’ let the young rascal alone. But 
you see I didn’t know it.” 

“ He’s my brother,” said the young woman, 
conclusively. 

“ The more shame to him,” returned Ste- 
phen. “ If he’d been your husband, now, 
there might ha’ been more harm than good 
in interferin’, ’cause he’d only give it you 
the worse after; but brothers! Well, I’m 
sure it’s a pity I interfered.” 

I don’t see the difference,” she retorted, 
still with offence. 

‘‘ I beg your pardon, then,” said Stephen. 
“ I promise you 1 won’t interfere next time.” 

So saying, he turned, took up his shutter, 
and proceeded to close his shop. The young 
woman walked on. 

Stephen gave an inward growl or two at 
the depravity of human nature, and set out 
to make bis usual visits ; but before he reached 
the place, he had begun to doubt whether the 
old Adam had not overcome him in the 
matter of boxing the boy’s ears ; and the 
following interviews appeared in consequence 
less satisfactory than usual. Disappointed 


6 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


with himself, he could not he so hopeful 
about others. 

As he was descending a stair so narrow 
that it was only just possible for two people 
to pass, he met the same young woman as- 
cending. Glad of the opportunity, he stepped 
aside with his best manners and said : 

‘‘ I am sorry I offended you this evening. 
I did not know that the boy was your 
brother.” 

“ Oh, sir ! ” she returned — for to one in 
her position, Stephen Archer was a gentle- 
man : had he not a shop of his own ? — “ you 
didn’t hurt him much; only I’m so anxious 
to save him.” 

“To be sure,” returned Stephen, “that is 
the one thing needful.” 

“ Yes, sir,” she rejoined. “ I try hard, but 
boys will be boys.” 

“ There is but one way, you know,” said 
Stephen, following the words with a certain 
formula which I will not repeat. 

The girl stared. “ I don’t know about 
that,” she said. “What I want is to keep 
him out of prison. Sometimes I think I 
shan’t be able long. Oh, sir! if you be the 
gentleman that goes about here, couldn’t you 
help me ? I can’t get anything for him to 
do, and I can’t be at home to look after 
him.” 

“ What is he about all day, then ? ” 

“ The streets,” she answered. “ I don’t 
know as he’s ever done anything he oughtn’t 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


7 


to, but he came home once in a fright, and 
that breathless with running, that I thought 
he’d ha’ fainted. If I only could get him 
into a place ! ” 

“ Do you live here ? ” he asked. 

Yes, sir ; I do.” 

At the moment a half-bestial sound below, 
accompanied by uncertain footsteps, an- 
nounced the arrival of a drunken bricklayer. 

“There’s Joe Bradley,” she said, in some 
alarm. “ Come into my room, sir, till he’s 
gone up ; there’s no harm in him when he’s 
sober, but he ain’t been sober for a week 
now.” 

Stephen obeyed ; and she, taking a key 
from her pocket, and unlocking a door on the 
landing, led him into a room to which his 
back-parlour was a paradise. She offered 
him the only chair in the room, and took 
her place on the edge of the bed, which 
showed a clean but much-worn patchwork 
quilt. Charley slept on the bed, and she on 
a shake-down in the corner. The room was 
not untidy, though the walls and floor were 
not clean ; indeed there were not in it articles 
enough to make it untidy withal. 

“ Where do you go on Sundays ? ” asked 
Stephen. 

“ Nowheres. I ain’t got nobody,” she 
added, with a smile, “ to take me nowheres.” 

“ What do you do then ? ” 

“ I’ve plenty to do mending of Charley’s 
trousers. You see they’re only shoddy, and 


8 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


as fast as I patch ’em in one place they’re out 
in another.” 

“ But you oughtn’t to work Sundays.” 

“ I have heard tell of people as say you 
oughtn’t to work of a Sunday ; but where’s 
the differ when you’ve got a brother to look 
after ? He ain’t got no mother.” 

“ But you’re breaking the four th command- 
ment; and you know where people go that 
do that. You believe in hell, I suppose.” 

“ I always thought that was a bad word.” 

“ To be sure ! But it’s where you’ll go if 
you break the Sabbath.” 

“ Oh, sir ! ” she said, bursting into tears, 
“ I don’t care what become of me if I could 
only save that boy.” 

“ What do you mean by saving him ? ” 

“ Keep him out of prison, to be sure. I 
shouldn’t mind the workus myself, if I could 
get him into a place.” 

A place was her heaven, a prison her hell. 

Stephen looked at her more attentively. 
No one who merely glanced at her could help 
seeing her eyes first, and no one who regarded 
them could help thinking her nice-looking at 
least, all in a shabby cotton dress and black 
shawl as she was. It was only the “ penury 
and pine ” that kept her from being beautiful. 
Her features were both regular and delicate, 
with an anxious mystery about the thin 
tremulous lips, and a beseeching look, like that 
of an animal, in her fine eyes, hazy with the 
trouble that haunted her mouth. Stephen had 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


d 


the good sense not to press the Sabbath ques- 
tion, and by degrees drew her story from her. 

Her father had been a watchmaker, but, 
giving way to drink, had been, as far back 
as she could remember, entirely dependent 
on her mother, who by charing and jobbing 
managed to keep the family alive. Sara 
was then the only child, but, within a few 
months after her father’s death, her mother 
died in giving birth to the boy. With 
her last breath she had commended him to 
his sister. Sara had brought him up — how 
she hardly knew. He had been everything 
to her. The child that her mother had given 
her was all her thought. Those who start 
with the idea “ that people with nought are 
naughty,” whose eyes are offended by rags, 
whose ears cannot distinguish between vul- 
garity and wickedness, and who think the 
first duty is care for self, must be excused 
from believing that Sara Coulter passed 
through all that had been decreed for her 
without losing her simplicity and purity. 
But God is in the back slums as certainly as 
— perhaps to some eyes more evidently than 
— in Belgravia. That which was the burden 
of her life — namely, the care of her brother — • 
was her salvation. After hearing her story, 
which he had to draw from her, because she 
had no impulse to talk about herself, Stephen 
went home to turn the matter over in his 
mind. 

The next Sunday, after he had had his 


10 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


dinner, lie went out into the same region, 
and found himself at Sara’s door. She was 
busy over a garment of Charley’s, who was 
sitting on the bed with half a loaf in his 
hand. When he recognized Stephen he 
jumped down, and would have rushed from 
the room ; but changing his mind, possibly 
because of the condition of his lower limbs, 
he turned, and springing into the bed, 
scrambled under the counterpane, and drew 
it over his head. 

‘‘ I am sorry to see you working on Sun- 
day,” Stephen said, with an emphasis that 
referred to their previous conversation. 

“ You would not have the boy go naked ? ” 
she returned, with again a touch of indig- 
nation. She had been thinking how easily 
a man of Stephen’s social position could get 
him a place if he would. Then recollecting 
her manners, she added, ‘‘ I should get him 
better clothes if he had a place. Wouldn’t 
you like to get a place now, Charley ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” said Charley, from under the 
counterpane, and began to peep at the 
visitor. 

He was not an ill-looking boy — only 
roguish to a degree. His eyes, as black as 
his sister’s, but only half as big, danced and 
twinkled with mischief. Archer would have 
taken him off to his ragged class, but even 
of rags he had not at the moment the com- 
plement necessary for admittance. He left 
them, therefore, with a few commonplaces of 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


11 


religions phrase, falling utterly meaningless. 
But he was not one to confine his ministra- 
tions to words : he was an honest man. 
Before the next Sunday it was clear to him 
that he could do nothing for the soul of 
Sara until he had taken the weight of her 
brother off it. 

When he called the next Sunday the same 
vision precisely met his view. She might 
have been sitting there ever since, with those 
wonderfully-patched trousers in her hands, 
and the boy beside her, gnawing at his lump 
of bread. But many a long seam had passed 
through her fingers since then, for she 
worked at a clothes-shop all the week with 
the sewing-machine, whence arose the possi- 
bility of patching Charley’s clothes, for the 
overseer granted her a cutting or two now 
and then. 

After a little chat, Stephen put the ques- 
tion : 

‘‘ If I find a place for Charley, will you 
go to Providence Chapel next Sunday ? ” 

“ I will go anywhere you please, Mr. 
Archer,” she answered, looking up quickly 
with a flushed face. She would have accom- 
panied him to any casino in London just 
as readily : her sole thought was to keep 
Charley out of prison. Her father had been 
in prison once; to keep her mother’s child 
out of prison was the grand object of her life. 

“Well,” he resumed, with some hesitation, 
for he had arrived at the resolution through 


12 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


difficulties, whose fogs yet lingered about 
him, “if he will be an honest, careful boy, 
I will take him myself.” 

“ Charley ! Charley ! ” cried Sara, utterly 
neglectful of the source of the benefaction ; 
and rising, she went to the bed and hugged 
him. 

“ Don’t, Sara ! ” said Charley, petulantly. 
“I don’t want girls to squash me. Leave 
go, I say. You mend my trousers, and /’ll 
take care of ??2^self.” 

“ The little wretch ! ” thought Stephen. 

Sara returned to her seat, and her needle 
went almost as fast as her sewing-machine. 
A glow had arisen now, and rested on her 
pale cheek : Stephen found himself staring 
at a kind of transfiguration, back from the 
ghostly to the human. His admiration ex- 
tended itself to her deft and slender fingers 
and there brooded until his conscience in- 
formed him that he was actually admiring 
the breaking of the Sabbath ; whereupon he 
rose. But all the time he was about amongst 
the rest of his people, his thoughts kept 
wandering back to the desolate room, the 
thankless boy, and the ministering woman. 
Before leaving, however, he had arranged 
with Sara that she should bring her brother 
to the shop the next day. 

The awe with which she entered it was 
not shared by Charley, who was never ripe 
for anything but frolic. Had not Stephen 
been influenced by a desire to do good, and 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


13 


possibly by another feeling too embryonic 
Ibr detection, he would never have dreamed 
of making an errand boy of a will-o’-the- 
wisp. As such, however, he was installed, 
and from that moment an anxiety unknown 
before took possession of Stephen’s bosom. 
He was never at ease, for he never knew 
what the boy might be about. He would 
have parted with him the first fortnight, but 
the idea of the prison had passed from Sara’s 
heart into his, and he saw that to turn the 
boy away from his first place would be to 
accelerate his gravitation thitherward. He 
had all the tricks of a newspaper boy in- 
digenous in him. Repeated were the com- 
plaints brought to the shop. One time the 
paper was thrown down the area, and 
brought into the breakfast-room defiled with 
wet. At another it was found on the door- 
step, without the bell having been rung, 
which could hardly have been from forget- 
fulness, for Charley’s delight was to set the 
bell ringing furiously, and then wait till the 
cook appeared, taking good care however to 
leave space between them for a start. Some- 
times the paper was not delivered at all, and 
Stephen could not help suspecting that he 
had sold it in the street. Yet both for his 
sake and Sara’s he endured, and did not 
even box his ears. The boy hardly seemed 
to be wicked : the spirit that possessed him 
was rather a polter-geist, as the Germans 
would call it, than a demon. 


14 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


Meantime, the Sunday after Charley’s ap- 
pointment, Archer, seated in his pew, searched 
all the chapel for the fulfilment of Sara’s 
part of the agreement, namely, her presence. 
But he could see her nowhere. The fact was, 
her promise was so easy that she had scarcely 
thought of it after, not suspecting that Stephen 
laid any stress upon its fulfilment, and, in- 
deed, not knowing where the chapel was. 
She had managed to buy a bit of something 
of the shoddy species, and while Stephen was 
looking for her in the chapel, she was making 
a jacket for Charley. Greatly disappointed, 
and chiefly, I do believe, that she had not 
kept her word, Stephen went in the afternoon 
to call upon her. 

He found her working away as before, and 
saving time by taking her dinner while she 
worked, for a piece of bread lay on the table 
by her elbow, and beside it a little brown 
sugar to make the bread go down. The 
sight went to Stephen’s heart, for he had 
just made his dinner off baked mutton and 
potatoes, washed down with his half-pint of 
stout. 

“ Sara ! ” he said solemnly, “ you promised 
to come to our chapel, and you have not kept 
your word.” He never thought that “ our 
chapel ” was not the landmark of the region. 

“ Oh, Mr. Archer,” she answered, “ I didn’t 
know as you cared about it. But,” she went 
on, rising and pushing her bread on one side 
to make room for her work, “ I’ll put on my 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


15 


bonnet directly.” Then she checked herself, 
and added, “ Oh ! I beg your pardon, sir — 
I’m so shabby ! You couldn’t be seen with 
the likes of me.” 

It touched Stephen’s chivalry — and some- 
thing deeper than chivalry. He had had no 
intention of walking with her. 

“ There’s no chapel in the afternoon,” he 
said ; “ but I’ll come and fetch you in the 
evening.” 

Thus it came about that Sara was seated 
in Stephen’s pew, next to Stephen himself, 
and Stephen felt a strange pleasure unknown 
before, like that of the shepherd who having 
brought the stray back to the fold cares little 
that its wool is torn by tlie bushes, and it 
looks a ragged and disreputable sheep. It 
was only Sara’s wool that might seem dis- 
reputable, for she was a very good-faced 
sheep. He found the hymns for her, and 
they shared the same book. He did not 
know then that Sara could not read a word 
of them. 

The gathered people, the stillness, the 
gaslights, the solemn ascent of the minister 
into the pulpit, the hearty singing of the 
congregation, doubtless had their effect upon 
Sara, for she had never been to a chapel and 
hardly to any place of assembly before. 
From all amusements, the burden of Charley 
and her own retiring nature had kept her 
back. 

But she could make nothing of the sermon. 


IG 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


She confessed afterwards that she did not 
know she had anything to do with it. Like 
‘‘ the Northern Farmer,” she took it all for 
the clergyman’s business, which she amongst 
the rest had to see done. She did not even 
wonder why Stephen should have wanted to 
bring her there. She sat when other people 
sat, pretended to kneel when other people 
pretended to kneel, and stood up when other 
people stood up — still brooding upon Charley’s 
jacket. 

But Archer’s feelings were not those he 
had expected. He had brought her, intend- 
ing her to be done good to ; but before the 
sermon was over he wished he had not 
brought her. He resisted the feeling for a 
long time, but at length yielded to it en- 
tirely ; the object of his solicitude all the 
while conscious only of the lighted' stillness 
and the new barrier between Charley and 
Newgate. The fact with regard to Stephen 
was that a certain hard occasioned by 
continual ploughings to the same depth and 
no deeper, in the soil of his mind, began this 
night to be broken up from within, and that 
through the presence of a young woman who 
did not for herself put together two words of 
the whole discourse. 

The pastor was preaching upon the say- 
ing of St. Paul, that he could wish him- 
self accursed from Christ for his brethren. 
Great part of his sermon was an attempt 
to prove that he could not have meant 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


17 


what his words implied. For the preacher’s 
mind was so filled with the supposed para- 
mount duty of saving his own soul, that 
the enthusiasm of the Apostle was simply 
incredible. Listening with that woman by 
his side, Stephen for the first time grew 
doubtful of the wisdom of his pastor. Nor 
could he endure that such should be the first 
doctrine Sara heard from his lips. Thus was 
he already and grandly repaid for his kind- 
ness ; for the presence of a woman who 
without any conscious religion was to herself 
a law of love, brought him so far into sym- 
pathy with the mighty soul of St. Paul, that 
from that moment the blessing of doubt was 
at work in his, undermining prison walls. 

He walked home with Sara almost in 
silence, for he found it impossible to impress 
upon her those parts of the sermon with 
which he had no fault to find, lest she should 
retort upon that one point. The arrows 
which Sara escaped, however, could from her 
ignorance have struck her only with their 
feather end. 

Things proceeded in much the same fashion 
for a while. Charley went home at night to 
his sister’s lodging, generally more than two 
hours after leaving the shop, but gave her 
no new ground of complaint. Every Sunday 
evening Sara went to the chapel, taking 
Charley with her when she could persuade 
him to go ; and, in obedience with the sup- 
posed wish of Stephen, sat in his pew. He 


18 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


did not go home with her any more for a 
while, and indeed visited her but seldom, 
anxious to avoid scandal, more especially as 
he was a deacon. 

But now that Charley was so far safe, 
Sara’s cheek began to generate a little of that 
celestial rosy red which is the blossom of the 
woman-plant, although after all it hardly 
equalled the heart of the blush rose. She 
grew a little rounder in form too, for she 
lived rather better now, — buying herself a 
rasher of bacon twice a week. Hence she 
began to be in more danger, as any one 
acquainted with her surroundings will easily 
comprehend. But what seemed at first the 
ruin of her hopes dissipated this danger. 

One evening, when she returned from her 
work, she found Steplien in her room. She 
made him the submissive grateful salutation, 
half courtesy, half bow, with which she 
always greeted him, and awaited his will. 

“ I am very sorry to have to tell you, Sara, 
that your brother ” 

She turned white as a shroud, and her 
great black eyes grew greater and blacker 
as she stared in agonized expectancy while 
Stephen hesitated in search of a better form 
of communication. Finding none, he blurted 
out the fact — 

“ — has robbed me, and run away.” 

‘‘Don’t send him to prison, Mr. Archer,” 
shrieked Sara, and laid herself on the floor 
at his feet with a grovelling motion, as if 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


19 


striving with her mother earth for comfort. 
There was not a film of art in this. She had 
never been to a theatre. The natural urging 
of life gave the truest shape to her entreaty. 
Her posture was the result of the same feeling 
which made the nations of old bring their 
sacrifices to the altar of a deity who, possibly 
benevolent in the main, had yet cause to be 
inimical to them. From the prostrate living 
sacrifice arose the one prayer, “ Don’t send 
him to prison ; don’t send him to prison ! ” 

Stephen gazed at her in bewildered admira- 
tion, half divine and all human. A certain 
consciousness of power had, I confess, a part 
in his silence, but the only definite shape this 
consciousness took was of beneficence. At- 
tributing his silence to unwillingness, Sara 
got half-way from the ground — that is, to 
her knees — and lifted a face of utter entreaty 
to the sight of Stephen. I will not say 
words fail me to describe the intensity of its 
prayer, for words fail me to describe the 
commonest phenomenon of nature : all I can 
is to say, that it made Stephen’s heart too 
large for its confining walls. “ Mr. Archer,” 
she said, in a voice hollow with emotion, “ I 
will do anything you like. I will be your 
slave. Don’t send Charley to prison.” 

The words were spoken with a certain 
strange dignity of self-abnegation. It is not 
alone the country people of Cumberland or 
of Scotland, who in their highest moments 
are capable of poetic utterance. 


20 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


An indescribable thrill of conscious delight 
shot through the frame of Stephen as the 
woman spoke the words. But the gentleman 
in him triumphed. I would have said the 
Christian, for whatever there was in Stephen 
of the gentle was there in virtue of the 
Christian, only he failed in one point : instead 
of saying at once, that he had no intention 
of prosecuting the boy, he pretended, I believe 
from the satanic delight in power that 
possesses every man of us, that he would 
turn it over in his mind. It might have 
been more dangerous, but it would have been 
more divine, if he had lifted the kneeling 
woman to his heart, and told her that not 
for the wealth of an imagination would he 
proceed against her brother. The divinity, 
however, was taking its course, both rough- 
hewing and shaping the ends of the two. 

She rose from the ground, sat on the one 
chair, with her face to the wall, and wept 
helplessly, with the added sting, perhaps, of 
a faint personal disappointment. Stephen 
failed to attract her notice, and left the room. 
She started up when she heard the door close, 
and flew to open it, but was only in time to 
hear the outer door. She sat down and cried 
again. 

Stephen had gone to find the boy if he 
might, and bring him to his sister. He 
ought to have said so, for to permit suffering 
for the sake of a joyful surprise is not good. 
Going home first, he was bardly seated in 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


21 


his room, to turn over not the matter but the 
means, when a knock came to the shop-door, 
the sole entrance, and there were two police- 
men bringing the deserter in a cab. He had 
been run over in the very act of decamping 
with the contents of the till, had lain all but 
insensible at the hospital while his broken 
leg was being set, but, as soon as he came 
to himself, had gone into such a fury of 
determination to return to his master, that 
the house-surgeon saw that the only chance 
for the ungovernable creature was to yield. 
Perhaps he had some dim idea of restoring 
the money ere his master should have dis- 
covered its loss. As he was very little, 
they made a couch lor him in the cab, and 
so sent him. 

It would appear that the suffering and the 
faintness had given his conscience a chance 
of being heard. The accident was to Charley 
what the sight of the mountain-peak was 
to the boy Wordsworth. He was delirious 
when he arrived, and instead of showing any 
contrition towards his master, only testified 
an extravagant joy at finding him again. 
Stephen had him taken into the back room, 
and laid upon his own bed. One of the 
policemen fetched the charwoman, and when 
she arrived, Stephen went to find Sara. 

She was sitting almost as he had left her, 
with a dull, hopeless look. 

“ T am sorry to say Charley has had an 
accident,” he said. 


22 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


She started up and clasped her hands. 

“ He is not in prison ? ” she panted in a 
husky voice. 

‘‘ No ; he is at my house. Come and see 
him. 1 don’t think he is in any danger, but 
his leg is broken.” 

A gleam of joy crossed Sara’s countenance. 
She did not mind the broken leg, for he was 
safe from her terror. She put on her bonnet,, 
tied the strings with trembling hands, and 
went with Stephen. 

“ You see God wants to keep him out of 
prison too,” he said, as they walked along 
the street. 

But to Sara this hardly conveyed an idea. 
She walked by his side in silence. 

“ Charley ! Charley ! ” she cried, when she 
saw him white on the bed, rolling his head 
from side to side. Charley ordered her away 
with words awful to hear, but which from 
him meant no more than words of ordinary 
temper in the mouth of the well-nurtured 
man or woman. She had spoiled and indulged 
him all his life, and now for the first time 
she was nothing to him, while the master 
who had lectured and restrained him was 
everything. When the surgeon wanted to 
change his dressings, he would not let him 
touch them till his master came. Before he 
was able to leave his bed, he had developed 
for Stephen a terrier-like attachment. But, 
after the first feverishness was over, his 
sister waited upon him. 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


23 


Stephen got a lodging, and abandoned bis 
back room to tbe brother and sister. But 
he had to attend to his shop, and therefore 
saw much of both of them. Finding tlien 
to his astonishment that Sara could not read, 
he gave all his odd moments to her instruc- 
tion, and her mind being at rest about Charley 
so long as she had him in bed, her spirit had 
leisure to think of other things. 

She learned rapidly. The lesson-book was 
of course the New Testament ; and Stephen 
soon discovered that Sara’s questions, moving 
his pity at first because of the ignorance 
they displayed, always left him thinking 
about some point that had never occurred to 
him before ; so that at length he regarded 
Sara as a being of superior intelligence way- 
laid and obstructed by unfriendly powers upon 
her path towards the threshold of the king- 
dom, while she looked up to him as to one 
supreme in knowledge as in goodness. But 
she never could understand the pastor. This 
would have been a great trouble to Stephen, 
had not his vanity been flattered by her 
understanding of himself. He did not con- 
sider that growing love had enlightened his 
eyes to see into her heart, and enabled him 
thus to use an ordinary human language for 
the embodiment of common-sense ideas ; 
whereas the speech of the pastor contained 
such an admixture of technicalities as to be 
unintelligible to the neophyte. 

Stephen >vas now distressed to find that 


24 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 


whereas formerly he had received everything 
without question that his minister spoke, he 
now in general went home in a doubting, 
questioning mood, begotten of asking himself 
what Sara would say. He feared at first 
that the old Adam was beginning to get the 
upper hand of him, and that Satan was laying 
snares for his soul. But when he found at 
the same time that his conscience was grow- 
ing more scrupulous concerning his business 
affairs, his hope sprouted afresh. 

One day, after Charley had been out for 
the first time, Sara, with a little tremor of 
voice and manner, addressed Stephen thus : — 
“ I shall take Charley home to-morrow, if 
you please, Mr. Archer.” 

‘‘ You don’t mean to say, Sara, you’ve been 
paying for those lodgings all this time ? ” 
half-asked, half-exclaimed Stephen. 

“ Yes, Mr. Archer. We must have some- 
where to go to. It ain’t easy to get a room 
at any moment, now them railways is every- 
wheres.” 

“ But I hope as how you’re comfortable 
where you are, Sara ? ” 

“Yes, Mr. Archer. But what am I to do 
for all your kindness ? ” 

“You can pay me all in a lump, if you 
like, Sara. Only you don’t owe me nothing.” 

Her colour came and went. She was not 
used to men. She could not tell what he 
would have her understand, and could not 
help trembling. 


STEPHEN ARCHER. 25 

“ What do you mean, Mr. Archer ? ” she 
faltered out. 

“ I mean you can give me yourself, Sara, 
and that’ll clear all scores.” 

“ But, Mr. Archer — you’ve been a-teaching 

of me good things You dont mean to 

marry me ! ” exclaimed Sara, bursting into 
tears. 

“ Of course I do, Sara. Don’t cry about it. 
I won’t if you don’t like.” 

This is how Stephen came to change his 
mind about his stock in trade. 


THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 


CHAPTER 1. 

My hearers, we grow old,” said the preacher. 
“ Be it summer or be it spring with us now, 
autumn will soon settle down into winter, 
that winter whose snow melts only in the 
grave. The wind of the world sets for the 
tomb. Some of us rejoice to be swept along 
on its swift wings, and hear it bellowing in 
the hollows of earth and sky ; but it will 
grow a terror to the man of trembling limb 
and withered brain, until at length he will 
long for the shelter of the tomb to escape its 
roaring and buffeting. Happy the man who 
shall then be able to believe that old age 
itself, with its pitiable decays and sad dreams 
of youth, is the chastening of the Lord, a 
sure sign of his love and his fatherhood.” 

It was the first Sunday in Advent; but 
the chastening of the Lord ” came into 
almost every sermon that man preached. 

“ Eloquent ! But after all, can this kind 
of thing be true?” said to himself a man of 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 27 

about thirty, who sat decorously listening. 
For many years he had thought he believed 
this kind of thing — but of late he was not 
so sure. 

Beside him sat his wife, in her new winter 
bonnet, her pretty face turned up toward 
the preacher; but her eyes — nothing else — 
revealed that she was not listening. She was 
much younger than her husband — hardly 
twenty, indeed. 

In the upper corner of the pew sat a pale- 
faced child about five, sucking her thumb, 
and staring at the preacher. 

The sermon over, they walked home in 
proximity. The husband looked gloomy, and 
his eyes sought the ground. The wife looked 
more smiling than cheerful, and her pretty 
eyes went hither and thither. Behind them 
walked the child — steadily, “ with level- 
fronting eyelids.” 

It was a late-built region of large, common- 
place houses, and at one of them they stopped 
and entered. The door of the dining-room 
was open, showing the table laid for their 
Sunday dinner. The gentleman passed on 
to the library behind it, the lady went up to 
her bedroom, and the child a stage higher 
to the nursery. 

It wanted half an hour to dinner. Mr. 
Greatorex sat down, drummed with his 
fingers on the arm of his easy-chair, took 
up a l30ok of arctic exploration, threw it 
again on the table, got up, and went to 


28 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

the smoking-room. He had built it for his 
wife’s sake, but was often glad of it for his 
own. Again he seated himself, took a cigar, 
and smoked gloomily. 

Having reached her bedroom, Mrs. Great- 
orex took off her bonnet, and stood for ten 
minutes turning it round and round. Earn- 
estly she regarded it — now gave a twist to 
the wire-stem of a flower, then spread wider 
the loop of a bow. She was meditating what 
it lacked of perfection rather than brooding 
over its merits : she was keen in bonnets. 

Little Sophy — or, as she called herself by 
a transposition of consonant sounds common 
with children, Phosy — found her nurse Alice 
in the nursery. But she was lost in the 
pages of a certain London weekly, which had 
found her in a mood open to its influences, 
and did not even look up when the child 
entered. With some effort Phosy drew off 
her gloves, and with more difficulty untied 
her hat. Then she took off her jacket, 
smoothed her hair, and retreated to a corner. 
There a large shabby doll lay upon her little 
chair : she took it up, disposed it gently upon 
the bed, seated herself in its place, got a little 
book from where she had left it under the 
chair, smoothed down her skirts, and began 
simultaneously to read and suck her thumb. 
The book was an unhealthy one, a cup filled 
to the brim with a poverty-stricken and 
selfish religion : such are always breaking 
Dut like an eruption here and there over the 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 29 

body of the Church, doing their part, doubt- 
less, in carrying off the evil humours gener- 
ated by poverty of blood, or the congestion of 
self-preservation. It is wonderful out of what 
spoiled fruit some children will suck sweetness. 

But she did not read far : her thoughts 
went back to a phrase which had haunted 
her ever since first she went to church : 
“ Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.” 

“ I wish he would chasten me,” she thought 
for the hundredth time. 

The small Christian had no suspicion that 
her whole life had been a period of chasten- 
ing — that few children indeed had to live 
in such a sunless atmosphere as hers. 

Alice threw, down the newspaper, gazed 
from the window into the back-yard of the 
next house, saw nothing but an elderly man- 
servant brushing a garment, and turned upon 
Sophy. 

“ Why don’t you hang up your jacket, 
miss ? ” she said, sharply. 

The little one rose, opened the wardrobe- 
door wide, carried a chair to it, fetched her 
jacket from the bed, clambered up on the 
chair, and, leaning far forward to reach a 
peg, tumbled right into the bottom of the 
wardrobe. 

“ You clumsy ! ” exclaimed the nurse 
angrily, and pulling her out by the arm, 
shook her. 

Alice was not generally rough to her, but 
there were reasons to-day. 


30 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

Phosy crept back to her seat, pale, fright- 
ened, and a little hurt. Alice hung up the 
jacket, closed the wardrobe, and, turning, con- 
templated her own pretty face and neat figure 
in the glass opposite. The dinner-bell rang. 

“ There, I declare ! ” she cried, and wheeled 
round on Phosy. “ And your hair not 
brushed yet, miss ! Will you ever learn to 
do a thing without being told it? Thank 
goodness, I shan’t be plagued with you long ! 
But I pity her as comes after me : I do ! ” 

“ If the Lord would but chasten me ! ” said 
the child to herself, as she rose and laid 
down her book with a sigh. 

The maid seized her roughly by the 
arm, and brushed her hair with an angry 
haste that made the child’s eyes water, and 
herself feel a little ashamed at the sight of 
them. 

“ How could anybody love such a trouble- 
some chit ? ” she said, seeking the comfort of 
justification from the child herself. 

Another sigh was the poor little damsel’s 
only answer. She looked very white and 
solemn as she entered the dining-room. 

Mr. Greatorex was a merchant in the City. 
But he was more of a man than a merchant, 
which all merchants are not. Also, he was 
more scrupulous in his dealings than some 
merchants in the same line of business, who 
yet stood as well with the world as he ; but, 
on the other hand, he had the meanness to 
pride himself upon it as if it had been some- 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 31 


thing he might have done without and yet 
held up his head. 

Some six years before, he had married to 
please his parents ; and a year before, he had 
married to please himself. His first wife had 
intellect, education, and heart, but little in- 
dividuality — not enough to reflect the indi- 
viduality of her husband. The consequence 
was, he found her uninteresting. He was 
kind and indulgent however, and not even 
her best friend blamed him much for mani- 
festing nothing beyond the average devotion 
of husbands. But in truth his wife had great 
capabilities, only they had never ripened, and 
when she died, a fortnight after giving birth 
to Sophy, her husband had not a suspicion of 
the large amount of undeveloped power that 
had passed away with her. 

Her child was so like her both in counte- 
nance and manner that he was too constantly 
reminded of her unlamented mother ; and he 
loved neither enough to discover that, in a 
sense as true as marvellous, the child was 
the very flower-bud of her mother’s nature, 
in which her retarded blossom had yet a 
chance of being slowly carried to perfection. 
Love alone gives insight, and the father took 
her merely for a miniature edition of the 
volume which he seemed to have laid aside 
for ever in the dust of the earth’s lumber- 
room. Instead, therefore, of watering the 
roots of his little human slip from the well 
of his afi*ections, he had scarcely as yet per- 


32 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

ceived more in relation to her than that he 
was legally accountable for her existence, and 
bound to give her shelter and food. If he 
had questioned himself on the matter, he 
would have replied that love was not want- 
ing, only waiting upon her growth, and the 
development of something to interest him. 

Little right as he had had to expect any- 
thing from his first marriage, he had yet 
cherished some hopes therein — tolerably 
vague, it is true, yet hardly faint enough, 
it would seem, for he was disappointed in 
them. When its bonds fell from him, how- 
ever, he flattered himself that he had not 
worn them in vain, but had through them 
arrived at a knowledge of women as rare as 
profound. But whatever the reach of this 
knowledge, it was not sufficient to prevent 
him from harbouring the presumptuous hope 
of so choosing and so fashioning the heart 
and mind of a woman that they should be 
as concave mirrors to his own. I do not 
mean that he would have admitted the figure, 
but such was really the end he blindly 
sought. I wonder how many of those who 
have been disappointed in such an attempt 
have been thereby aroused to the perception 
of what a frightful failure their success would 
have been on both sides. It was bad enough 
that Augustus Greatorex’s theories had 
cramped his own development ; it would 
have been ten-fold worse had they been 
\)perative to the stunting of another soul. 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 33 

Letty Mere wether was the daughter of a 
bishop in partihus. She had been burn 
tolerably innocent, had grown up more than 
tolerably pretty, and was, when she came 
to England at the age of sixteen, as nearly 
a genuine example of Locke’s sheet of white 
paper as could well have fallen to the hand 
of such an experimenter as Grreatorex would 
fain become. 

In his suit he had prospered — perhaps too 
easily. He loved the girl, or at lea^^t loved 
the modified reflection of her in his own 
mind; while she, thoroughly admiring the 
dignity, good looks, and accomplishments of 
the man whose attentions flattered her self- 
opinion, accorded him defeience enough to 
encourage his vainest hopes. Although she 
knew little, fluttering over the merest sur- 
faces of existence, she had sense enough to 
know that he talked sense to her, and foolish- 
ness enough to put it down to her own 
credit, while for the sense itself she cared 
little or nothing. And Greatorex, without 
even knowing what she was rough-hewn for, 
would take upon him to shape her ends ! — 
an ambition the Divinity never permits to 
succeed : he who fancies himself the carver 
finds himself but the chisel, or indeed perhaps 
only the mallet, in the hand of the true 
workman. 

During the days of his courtship, then, 
Letty listened and smiled, or answered with 
what he took for a spiritual response, when 


34 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST, 

it was merely a brain-eclio. Looking down 
into the pond of her being, whose surface 
was not yet ruffled by any bubbling of 
springs from below, he saw the reflection 
of himself and was satisfied. An able man 
on his hobby looks a centaur of wisdom 
and folly ; but if he be at all a wise man, 
the beast will one day or other show him 
the jade’s favour of unseating him. Mean- 
time Augustus G-reatorex was fooled, not by 
poor little Letty, who was not capable of 
fooling him, but by himself. Letty had 
made no pretences ; had been interested, and 
had shown her interest; had understood, or 
seemed to understand, what he said to her, 
and forgotten it the next moment — had no 
pocket to put it in, did not know what to 
do with it, and let it drop into the Limbo 
of Yanity. They had not been married 
iriany days before the scouts of advancing 
disappointment were upon them. Augustus 
resisted manfully for a time. But the truth 
was each of the two had to become a great 
deal more than either was, before any approach 
to unity was possible. He tried to interest 
her in one subject alter another — tried her 
first, I am ashamed to say, with political 
economy. In that instance, when he came 
home to dinner he found that she had not got 
beyond the first page of the book he had left 
with her. But she had the best of excuses, 
namely, that of that page she had not under- 
stood a sentence. He saw his mistake, and 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 35 

tried her with poetry. But Milton, with 
whom unfortunately he commenced his ap- 
proaches, was to her, if not equally unintelli- 
gible, equally uninteresting. He tried her 
next with the elements of science, but with 
no better success. He returned to poetry, 
and read some of the Faerie Queene with 
her : she was, or seemed to be, interested in 
all his talk about it, and inclined to go on 
with it in his absence, but found the fir^t 
stanza she tried more than enough without 
him to give life to it. She could give it 
none, and therefore it gave her none. I 
believe she read a chapter of the Bible every 
day, but the only books she read with any 
real interest were novels of a sort that 
Augustus despised. It never occurred to 
him that he ought at once to have made 
friends of this Momus of unrighteousness, 
for by them he might have found entrance to 
the sealed chamber. He ought to have read 
with her the books she did like, for by them 
only could he make her think, and from them 
alone could he lead her to better. It is but 
from the very step upon which one stands 
that one can move to the next. Besides these 
books, there was nothing in her scheme of 
the universe but fashion, dress, calls, the 
park, other-peopledom, concerts, plays, church- 
going — whatever could show itself on the 
frosted glass of her camera obscura — make an 
interest of motion and colour in her darkened 
chamber. Without these, her bosom’s mis* 


36 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

tress would have found life unendurable, for 
not yet had she ascended her throne, but lay 
on the floor of her nursery, surrounded with 
toys that imitated life. 

It was no wonder, therefore, that Augustus 
was at length compelled to allow himself dis- 
appointed. That it was the fault of his self- 
confidence made the thing no whit better. 
He was too much of a man not to cherish 
a certain tenderness for her, but he soon 
found to his dismay that it had begun to be 
mingled with a shadow of contempt. Against 
this he struggled, but with fluctuating suc- 
cess. He st()pped later and later at business, 
and when he came home spent more and 
more of his time in the smoking-room, where 
by and by he had bookshelves put up. 
Occasionally he would accept an invitation 
to dinner and accompany his wife, but he 
detested evening parties, and when Letty, 
who never refused an invitation if she could 
help it, went to one, he remained at home 
with his books. But his power of reading 
began to diminish. He became restless and 
irritable. Something kept gnawing at his 
heart. There was a sore spot in it. The 
spot grew larger and larger, and by degrees 
the centre of his consciousness came to be a 
soreness : his cherished idea had been fooled ; 
he had taken a silly girl for a woman of 
undeveloped wealth ; — a bubble, a surface 
whereon fair colours chased each other, for a 
hearted crystal. 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST, 37 

On her part, Letty too had her grief, 
which, unlike Augustus, she did not keep to 
herself, receiving in return from more than 
one of her friends the soothing assurance that 
Augustus was only like all other men ; that 
women were but their toys, which they cast 
away when weary of them. Letty did not 
see that she was herself making a toy of her 
life, or that Augustus was right in refusing 
to play with such a costly and delicate thing. 
Neither did Augustus see that, having, by 
his own blunder, married a mere child, he 
was bound to deal with her as one, and not 
let the child suffer for his fault more than 
what could not be helped. It is not by 
pressing our insights upon them, but by 
bathing the sealed eyelids of the human 
kittens, that we can help them. 

And all the time poor little Phosy was left 
to the care of Alice, a clever, careless, good- 
hearted, self-satisfied damsel, who, although 
seldom so rough in her behaviour as we have 
just seen her, abandoned the child almost 
entirely to her own resources. It was often 
she sat alone in the nursery, wishing the 
Lord would chasten her — because then he 
would love her. 

The first course was nearly over ere 
Augustus had brought himself to ask — 

“ What did you think of the sermon to- 
day, Letty ? ” 

“Not much,” answered Letty. “ I am not 
fond of finery. I prefer simplicity.” 


38 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

Augustus lield liis peace bitterly. For it 
was just finery in a sermon, without knowing 
it, that Letty was fond of : what seemed to 
him a flimsy syllabub of sacred things, beaten 
up with the whisk of composition, was charm- 
ing to Letty ; while, on the contrary, if a 
man such as they had been listening to was 
carried away by the thoughts that struggled 
in him for utterance, the result, to her judg- 
ment, was finery, and the object display. 
In excuse it must be remembered that she 
had been used to her father’s style, which no 
one could have aspersed with lack of sobriety. 

Presently she spoke again. 

“ Gus, dear, couldn’t you make up your 
mind for once to go with me to Lady Ash- 
daile’s to-morrow ? I am getting quite 
ashamed of appearing so often without you.” 

‘‘ There is another way of avoiding that 
unpleasantness,” remarked her husband drily. 

“ You cruel creature ! ” returned Letty 
playfully. “ But I must go this once, for I 
promised Mrs. Holden.” 

“ You know, Letty,” said her husband, 
after a little pause, “ it gets of more and more 
consequence that you should not I’atigue 
yourself. By keeping such late hours in 
such stifling rooms you are endangering two 
lives — remember that, Letty. If you stay at 
home to-morrow, I will come home early, and 
read to you all the evening.” 

“ Guss}^, that iwuld be charming. You 
know there is nothing in the world I should 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 39 

enjoy so much. But this time I really 
mustn’t.” 

She launched into a list of all tlie great 
nobodies and small somebodies who were to 
be there, and whom she positively must see : 
it might be her only chance. 

Those last words quenched a sarcasm on 
Augustus’ lips. He was kinder than usual 
the rest of the evening, and read her to sleep 
with the Pilgrim’s Progress. 

Phosy sat in a corner, listened, and under- 
stood. Or where she misunderstood, it was 
an honest misunderstanding, which never 
does much hurt. Neither father nor mother 
spoke to her till they bade her good night. 
Neither saw the hungry heart under the 
mask of the still face. The father never 
imagined her already fit for the modelling 
she was better without, and the stepmother 
had to become a mother before she could 
value her. 

Phosy went to bed to dream of the Valley 
of Humiliation. 


CHAPTER 11. 

The next morning Alice gave her mistress 
warning. It was quite unexpected, and she 
looked at her aghast. 

“ Alice,” she said at length, “ you’re never 
going to leave me at such a time ! ” 


40 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

I’m sorry it don’t suit you, ma’am, but I 
must.” 

“ Why, Alice ? What is the matter ? Has 
Sophy been troublesome ? ” 

“No, ma’am; there’s no harm in that 
child.” 

“Then what can it be, Alice? Perhaps 
you are going to be married sooner than you 
expected ? ” 

Alice gave her chin a little toss, pressed 
her lips together, and was silent. 

“ I have always been kind to you,” resumed 
her mistress. 

“ I’m sure, ma’am, I never made no com- 
plaints ! ” returned Alice, but as she spoke 
she drew herself up straighter than before. 

“ Then what is it ? ” said her mistress. 

“ The fact is, ma’am,” answered the girl, 
almost fiercely, “ I cdiimot any longer endure 
a state of domestic slavery.” 

“ I don’t understand you a bit better,” said 
Mrs. Greatorex, trying, but in vain, to smile, 
and therefore looking angrier than she was. 

“ I mean, ma’am — an’ I see no reason as [ 
shouldn’t say it, for it’s the truth — theie’s a 
worm at the root of society where one 
yuman bein’ ’s got to do the dirty work of 
another. I don’t mind sweepin’ up my 
own dust, but I won’t sweep up nobody 
else’s. I ain’t a goin’ to demean myself no 
longer ! There ! ” 

“ Leave the room, Alice,” said Mrs. Great- 
orex ; and when, with a toss and a flounce. 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 41 

tlie young woman had vanished, she burst 
into tears of anger and annoyance. 

The day passed. The evening came. She 
dressed without Alice’s usual help, and went 
to Lady Ashdaile’s with her iriend. There 
a reaction took place, and her spirits rose 
unnaturally. She even danced — to the dis- 
gust of one or two quick-eyed matrons who 
eat by the wall. 

When she came home she found her hus- 
band sitting up for her. He said next to 
nothing, and sat up an hour longer with his 
book. 

In the night she was taken ill. Her hus- 
band called Alice, and ran himself to fetch 
the doctor. For some hours she seemed in 
danger, but by noon was much better. Only 
the greatest care was necessary. 

As soon as she could speak, she told 
Augustus of Alice’s warning, and he sent 
for her to the library. 

She stood before him with flushed cheeks 
and flashing eyes. 

“ I understand, Alice, you have given your 
mistress warning,” he said gently. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Your mistress is very ill, Alice.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

‘‘ Don’t you think it would be ungrateful 
of you to leave her in her present condition ? 
She’s not likely to be strong for some time to 
come.” 

The use of the word ‘‘ ungrateful ” was 


42 THE- GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

an nnfortnnate one. Alice beg'ged to know 
what she had to be grateful for. Was her 
work worth nothing ? And her master, as 
every one must who claims that which can 
only be freely given, found himself in the 
wrong. 

“ Well, Alice,” he said, “ we won’t dispute 
that point ; and if you are really determined 
on going, you must do the best you can for 
your mistress for the rest of the month.” 

Alice’s sense of injury was soothed by her 
master’s forbearance. She had always rather 
approved of Mr. Grreatorex, and she left the 
room more softly than she had entered it. 

Letty had a fortnight in bed, during which 
she reflected a little. 

The very day on which she left her room, 
Alice sought an interview with her master, 
and declared she could not stay out her month ; 
she must go home at once. 

She had been very attentive to her mistress 
during the fortnight : there must be some- 
thing to account for her strange behaviour. 

“ Come now, Alice,” said her master, 
“ what’s at the back of all this ? ' You have 
been a good, well-behaved, obliging girl till 
now, and I am certain you would never be 
like this if there weren’t something wrong 
somewhere.” 

“ Something wrong, sir ! No, indeed, sir ! 
Except you call it wrong to have an old 
unMe s dies and leaves ever so much money 
ands on thousands, the lawyers say.” 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 43 

And does it come to yon then, Alice ? ” 

1 get my share, sir. He left it to be 
parted even between his nephews and nieces.'’ 

“ Why, Alice, you are quite an heiress, 
then ! ” returned her master, scarcely however 
believing the thing so grand as Alice would 
have it. “ But don’t you think now it would 
be rather hard that your fortune should be 
Mrs. Greatorex’s misfortune ? ” 

“Well, I don’t see as how it shouldn’t,” 
replied Alice. “ It’s mis’ess’s fortun’ as ’as 
been my misfortun’ — ain’t it now, sir ? An’ 
why shouldn’t it be the other way next ? ” 

“ I don’t quite see how your mistress’s 
fortune can be said to be your misfortune, 
Alice.” 

“ Anybody would see that, sir, as wasn’t 
blinded by class-prejudices.” 

“ Class-prejudices ! ” exclaimed Mr. Great- 
orex, in surprise at the word. 

“ It’s a term they use, I believe, sir ! But 
it’s plain enough that if mis’ess hadn’t ’a’ been 
better off than me, she wouldn’t ha’ been able 
to secure my services— as you calls it.” 

“ That is certainly plain enough,” returned 
Mr. Greatorex. “ But suppose nobody had 
been able to secure your services, what would 
have become of you ? ” 

“By that time the people’d have rose to 
assert their rights.” 

“ To what ? — To fortunes like yours ? ” 

“ To bread and cheese at least, sir,” re- 
turned Alice, pertly. 


44 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

Well, but you’ve had something better 
than bread and cheese.” 

“ I don’t make no complaints as to the 
style of livin’ in the house, sir, but that’s all 
one, so long as it’s on the vile condition 
of domestic slavery — which it’s nothing can 
justify.” 

“ Then of course, although you are now a 
woman of property, you will never dream 
of having any one to wait on you,” said her 
master, amused with the volume of human 
nature thus opened to him. 

“ All I say, sir, is — it’s my turn now ; and 
I ain’t goin’ to be sit upon by no one. I 
know my dooty to myself.” 

“ I didn’t know there was such a duty, 
Alice,” said her master. 

Something in his tone displeased her. 

“ Then you know now, sir,” she said, and 
bounced out of the room. 

The next moment, however, ashamed of 
her rudeness, she re-entered, saying, 

‘‘ I don’t want to be unkind, sir, but I must 
go home. I’ve got a brother that’s ill, too, 
and wants to see me. If you don’t object to 
me goin’ home for a month, I promise you to 
come back and see mis’ess through her trouble 
— as a friend, you know, sir.” 

“ But just listen to me first, Alice,” said 
Mr. Greatorex. “ I’ve had something to do 
with wills in my time, and I can assure you 
it is not likely to be less than a year before 
you can touch the money. You had much 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 45 

better stay where you are till your uncle’s 
affairs are settled. You don’t know what 
may happen. There’s many a slip between 
cup and lip, you know.” 

“Oh! it’s all right, sir. Everybody knows 
the money’s left to his nephews and nieces, 
and me and my brother’s as good as any.” 

“ I don’t doubt it : still, if you’ll take my 
advice, you’ll keep a sound roof over your 
head till another’s ready for you.” 

Alice only threw her chin in the air, and 
said almost threateningly, 

“Am I to go for the month, sir? ” 

“ I’ll talk to your mistress about it,” 
answered Mr. Grreatorex, not at all sure that 
such an arrangement would be for his wife’s 
comfort. 

But the next day Mrs. Greatorex had a 
long talk with Alice, and the result was that 
on the following Monday she was to go home 
for a month, and then return for two months 
more at least. What Mr. Greatorex had said 
about the legacy, had had its effect, and, 
besides, her mistress had spoken to her with 
pleasure in her good fortune. About Sophy 
no one felt any anxiety : she was no trouble 
to any one, and the housemaid would see to 
her. 


46 


THE (jllETE OE THE CHILD CHKiET. 


CHAPTER III. 

On the Sunday evening, Alice’s lover, having 
heard, not from herself, but by a side wind, 
that she was going home the next day, made 
his appearance in Wimborne Square, some- 
what perplexed — both at the move, and at 
her leaving him in ignorance of the same. 
He was a cabinet-maker in an honest shop in 
the neighbourhood, and in education, faculty, 
and general worth, considerably Alice’s su- 
perior — a fact which had hitherto rather 
pleased her, but now gave zest to the change 
which she imagined had subverted their 
former relation. Full of the sense of her new 
superiority, she met him draped in an in- 
describable strangeness. John Jephson felt, 
at the very first word, as if her voice came 
from the other side of the English Channel. 
He wondered what he had done, or rather 
what Alice could imagine he had done or 
said, to put her in such tantrums. 

Alice, my dear,” he said — for John was 
a man to go straight at the enem}^, “ what’s 
amiss ? What’s come over you ? You ain’t 
altogether like your own self to-night ! And 
here I find you’re goin’ away, and ne’er a 
word to me about it ! What have I done ? ” 
Alice’s chin alone made reply. She waited 
the fitting moment, with splendour to as- 
tonish, and with grandeur to subdue her 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 47 

lover. To tell the sad truth, she was no 
longer sure that it would be well to encourage 
him on the old footing ; was she not standing 
on tiptoe, her skirts in her hand, on the 
brink of the brook that parted serfdom from 
gentility, on the point of stepping daintily 
across, and leaving domestic slavery, red 
hands, caps, and obedience behind her? How 
then was she to marry a man that had black 
nails, and smelt of glue ? It was incumbent 
on her at least, for propriety’s sake, to render 
him at once aware that it was in conde- 
scension ineffable she took any notice of him. 

“ Alice, my girl ! ” began John again, in 
expostulatory tone. 

“ Miss Cox, if you please, John Jephson,” 
interposed Alice. 

“ What on ’arth’s come over you ? ” ex- 
claimed John, with the first throb of rousing 
indignation. “ But if you ain’t your own 
self no more, why. Miss Cox be it. ’T seems 
to me ’s if I warn’t my own self no more — ’s 
if I’d got into some un else, or ’t least hedn’t 
got my own ears on m’ own head. — Never 
saw or heerd Alice like this afore ! ” he added, 
turning in gloomy bewilderment to the house- 
maid for a word of human sympathy. 

The movement did not altogether please 
Alice, and she felt she must justify her be- 
haviour. 

‘‘You see, John,” she said, with dignity, 


48 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST, 


things as no woman can help, and therefore 
as no man has no right to complain of them. 
It’s not as if I’d gone an’ done it, or changed 
myself, no more ’n if it ’ad took place in my 
cradle. What can I help it, if the world 
goes and changes itself? Am / to blame ? — 
tell me that. It's not that I make no com- 
plaint, but 1 tell you it ain’t me, it’s circum- 
stances as is gone and changed theirselves, 
and bein' as circumstances is changed, things 
ain’t the same as they was, and Miss is the 
properer term from you to me, John Jephson.” 

“ Dang it if I know what you’re a drivin’ 
at, Alice ! — Miss Cox! — and I beg yer pardon, 
miss, I’m sure. — Dang me if I do 1 ” 

“ Don’t swear, John Jephson — leastways 
before a lady. It’s not proper.” 

“ It seems to me. Miss Cox, as if the wind 
was a settin’ from Bedlam, or may be Colney 
Hatch,” said John, who was considered a 
humourist among his comrades. “I wouldn’t 
take no liberties with a lady. Miss Cox ; but 
if I might be so bold as to arst the joke of 
the thing ” 

“ Joke, indeed 1 ” cried Alice. “ Do you call 
a dead uncle and ten thousand pounds a joke ?” 

‘‘ God bless me 1 ” said John. “ You don’t 
mean it, Alice ? ” 

“ I do mean it, and that you’ll find, John 
Jephson. I’m goin’ to bid you good-bye to- 
morrer.” 

“ Whoy, Alice 1 ” exclaimed honest John, 
aghast. 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 49 

It’s truth I tell ye,” said Alice. 

‘‘And for how long?” gasped John, fore- 
feeling illimitable misfortune. 

“ That depends,” returned Alice, who did 
not care to lessen the effect of her communi- 
cation by mentioning her promised return for 
a season. “ — It ain’t likely,” she added, “as 
a heiress is a goin’ to act the nuss-maid much 
longer.” 

“But Alice,” said John, “you don’t mean 
to say — it’s not in your mind now — it can’t 
be, Alice — you’re only jokin’ with me ” 

“ Indeed, and I’m not ! ” interjected Alice, 
with a sniff. 

“I don’t mean that way, you know. What 
I mean is, you don’t mean as how this ’ere 
money — dang it all ! — as how it’s to be all 
over between you and me ? — You cant mean 
that, Alice ! ” ended the poor fellow, with a 
choking in his throat. 

It was very hard upon him ! He must either 
look as if he wanted to share her money, or 
else as if he were ready to give her up. 

“ Arst yourself, John Jephson,” answered 
Alice, “whether it’s likely a young lady of 
fortun’ would be keep in’ company with a 
young man as didn’t know how to take off 
his hat to her in the park ? ” 

Alice did not above half mean what she 
said : she wished mainly to enhance her own 
importance. At the same time she did mean 
it half, and that would have been enough for 
Jephson. He rose, grievously wounded. 


50 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

‘‘ Good-bye, Alice,” he said, taking the 
hand she did not refuse. “Ye’re throwin’ 
from ye what all yer money won’t buy.” 

She gave a scornful little laugh, and John 
walked out of the kitchen. 

At the door he turned with one lingering 
look; but in Alice there was no sign of 
softening. She turned scornfully away, and 
no doubt enjoyed her triumph to the full. 

The next morning she went away. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Greatorex had ceased to regard the 
advent of Christmas with much interest. 
Naturally gifted with a strong religious 
tendency, he had, since his first marriage, 
taken, not to denial, but to the side of 
objection, spending much energy in contempt 
for the foolish opinions of others, a self- 
indulgence which does less than little to 
further the growth of one’s own spirit in 
truth and righteousness. The only person 
who stands excused — I do not say justified — 
in so doing, is the man who, having been 
taught the same opinions, has found them a 
legion of adversaries barring his way to the 
truth. But having got rid of them for him- 
self, it is, I suspect, worse than useless to 
attack them again, save as the ally of those 
who are fighting their way through the same 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 5i 

rfinks to the truth. Greatorex had been 
indulging his intellect at the expense of his 
heart. A man may have light in the braiu 
and darkness in the heart. It were better 
to be an owl than a strong-eyed apteryx. 
He was on the path which naturally ends 
in blindness and unbelief. I fancy, if he 
had not been neglectful of his child, she 
would ere this time have relighted his 
Christmas-candles for him ; but now his 
second disappointment in marriage had so 
dulled his heart that he had begun to regard 
life as a stupid affair, in which the most 
enviable fool was the man who could still 
expect to realize an ideal. He had set out 
on a false track altogether, but had not yet 
discovered that there had been an immoral 
element at work in his mistake. 

For what right had he to desire the 
fashioning of any woman after his ideas? 
did not the angel of her eternal Ideal for 
ever behold the face of her Father in heaven ? 
The best that can be said for him is, that, 
notwithstanding his disappointment and her 
faults, yea, notwithstanding his own faults, 
which were, with all his cultivation and 
strength of character, yet more serious than 
hers, he was still kind to her; yes, I may 
say for him, that, notwithstanding even her 
silliness, which is a sickening fault, and one 
which no supremacy of beauty can over- 
shadow, he still loved her a little. Hence 
the care he showed for her in respect of 


52 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 


the coming sorrow was genuine; it did not 
all belong to his desire for a son to whom 
he might be a father indeed — after his own 
fancies, however. Letty, on her part, was 
as full of expectation as the girl who has 
been promised a doll that can shut and open 
its eyes, and cry when it is pinched ; her 
carelessness of its safe arrival came of igno- 
rance and not indifference. 

It cannot but seem strange that such a 
man should have been so careless of the child 
he had. But from the first she had painfully 
reminded him of her mother, with whom in 
truth he had never quarrelled, but with 
whom he had not found life the less irksome 
on that account. Add to this that he had 
been growing fonder of business, — a fact 
which indicated, in a man of his endowment 
and development, an inclination downwards 
of the plane of his life. It was some time 
since he had given up reading poetry. 
History had almost followed : he now read 
little except politics, travels, and popular 
expositions of scientific progress. 

That year Christmas Eve fell upon a 
Monday. The day before, Letty not feeling 
very well, her husband thought it better not 
to leave her, and gave up going to church. 
Phosy was utterly forgotten, but she dressed 
herself, and at the usual hour appeared with 
her prayer-book in her hand ready for church. 
When her father told her that he was not 
going, she looked so blank that he took pity 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 63 

upon her, and accompanied her to the church- 
door, promising to meet her as she came out. 
Phosy sighed from relief as she entered, for 
she had a vague idea that by going to church 
to pray for it she might move the Lord to 
chasten her. At least he would see her 
there, and might think of it. She had never 
had such an attention from her father before, 
never such dignity conferred upon her as to 
be allowed to appear in church alone, sitting 
in the pew by herself like a grown damsel. 
But I doubt if there was any pride in her 
stately step, or any vanity in tlie smile — no, 
not smile, but illuminated mist, the vapour of 
smiles, which haunted her sweet little solemn 
church-window of a face, as she walked up 
the aisle. 

The preaclier was one of whom she had 
never heard her father speak slighting word, 
in whom her unbounded trust had never been 
shaken. Also he was one who believed with 
his whole soul in the things that make 
Christmas precious. To him tlie birth of 
the wonderful baby hinted at hundreds of 
strange things in the economy of the planet. 
That a man could so thoroughly persuade 
himself that he believed the old fable, was 
matter of marvel to some of his friends who 
held blind Nature the eternal mother, and 
Night the everlasting grandmother of all 
things. But the child Phosy, in her dreams 
or out of them, in church or nursery, with 
her book or her doll, was never out of the 


54 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

region of wonders, and would have believed, 
or tried to believe, anything that did not 
involve a moral impossibility. 

What the preacher said I need not even 
partially repeat ; it is enough to mention 
a certain metamorphosed deposit from the 
stream of his eloquence carried home in her 
mind by Phosy : from some of his sayings 
about the birth of Jesus into the world, into 
the family, into the individual human bosom, 
she had got it into her head that Christmas 
Day was not a birthday like that she had 
herself last year, but that, in some wonderful 
way, to her requiring no explanation, the 
baby Jesus was born every Christmas Da} 
afresh. What became of him afterwards she 
did not know, and indeed she had never yet 
thought to ask how it was that he could 
come to every house in London as well as 
No. 1, Wimborne Square. Little of a home 
as another might think it, that house was 
yet to her the centre of all houses, and the 
wonder had not yet widened rippling beyond 
it : into that spot of the pool the eternal gift 
would fall. 

Her father forgot the time over his book, 
but so entranced was her heart with the 
expectation of the promised visit, now so 
near — the day after to-morrow — that, if she 
did not altogether forget to look lor him as 
she stepped down the stair from the church 
door to the street, his absence caused her 
no uneasiness ; and when, just as she reached 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 55 

it, lie opened the house-door in tardy haste 
to redeem liis promise, she looked up at him 
with a solemn, smileless repose, born of 
spiritual tension and speechless anticipation, 
upon her face, and walking past him with- 
out change in the rhythm of her motion, 
marched stately up the stairs to the nursery. 
I believe the centre of her hope was that 
when the baby came she would beg him on 
her knees to ask the Lord to chasten her. 

When dessert was over, her mother on 
the sofa in the drawing-room, and her father 
in an easy-chair, with a bottle of his favourite 
wine by his side, she crept out of the room 
and away again to the nursery. There she 
reached up to her little bookshelf, and, full 
of the sermon as spongy mists are full of 
the sunlight, took thence a volume of stories 
from the German, the re-reading of one of 
which, naiTating the visit of the Christ-child, 
laden with gifts, to a certain household, and 
what he gave to each and all therein, she 
had, although sorely tempted, saved up until 
now, and sat down with it by the fire, the 
only light she had. When the housemaid, 
suddenly remembering she must put her to 
bed, and at the same time discovering it was 
a whole hour past her usual time, hurried 
to the nursery, she found her fast asleep in 
her little armchair, her book on her lap, 
and the fire self-consumed into a dark cave 
with a sombre glow in its deepest hollows. 
Dreams had doubtless come to deepen i\iQ 


56 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

impressions of sermon and mdhrchen, for as 
she slowly yielded to the hands of Polly 
putting her to bed, her lips, unconsciously 
moved of the slumbering but not sleeping 
spirit, more than once murmured the words 
Lord loveth and chasteneth. Right blessedly 
would I enter the dreams of such a child — 
revel in them, as a bee in the heavenly gulf 
of a cactus-flower. 


CHAPTER V. 

On Christmas Eve the church bells were 
ringing through the murky air of London, 
whose streets lay flaring and steaming below. 
The brightest of their constellations were 
the butchers’ shops, with their shows of 
prize beef ; around them, the eddies of the 
human tides were most confused and knotted. 
But the toy-shops were brilliant also. To 
Phosy they would have been the treasure- 
caves of the Christ-child — all mysteries, all 
with insides to them — boxes, and desks, and 
windmills, and dove-cots, and hens with 
chickens, and who could tell what all ? In 
every one of those shops her eyes would 
have searched for the Christ-child, the giver 
of all their wealth. For to her he was 
everywhere that night — ubiquitous as the 
luniinous mist that brooded all over London 
—of which, however, she saw nothing but 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 57 

the glow above the mews. John Jephson 
was out in the middle of all the show, 
drifting about in it : he saw nothing that 
had pleasure in it, his heart was so heavy. 
He never thought once of the Christ-child, 
or even of the Christ-man, as the giver 
of anything. Birth is the one standing 
promise-hope for the race, but for poor John 
this Christmas held no promise. With all 
his humour, he was one of those people, 
generally dull and slow — God grant me and 
mine such didness and such sloth — who 
having once loved, cannot cease. During 
the fortnight he had scarce had a moment’s 
ease from the sting of his Alice’s treatment. 
The honest fellow’s feelings were no study 
to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure 
and the pain of tliem ; but I believe it was 
not mainly for himself that he was sorry. 
Like Othello, “ the pity of it ” haunted him : 
he had taken Alice for a downright girl, 
about whom there was and could be no 
mistake ; and the first hot blast of pros- 
perity had swept her away like a hectic leat. 
What were all the shops dressed out in holly 
and mistletoe, what were all the rusljing 
flaming gas-jets, what the fattest of prize- 
pigs to John, who could never more imagine 
a spare-rib on the table between Alice and 
him of a Sunday ? His imagination ran on 
seeing her pass in her carriage, and drop 
him a nod of condescension as she swept 
noisily by him — trudging home weary from 


58 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

his work to his loveless fireside. lie didn’t 
want her money ! Honestly, he would rather 
have her without than with money, for he 
now regarded it as an enemy, seeing what 
evil changes it could work. “ There be some 
devil in it, sure ! ” he said to himself. True, 
he had never found any in his week’s wages, 
but he did remember once finding the devil 
in a month’s wages received in the lump. 

As he was thus tli inking with himself, a 
carriage came suddenly from a side street 
into the crowd, and while he stared at it, 
thinking Alice might be sitting inside it 
while he was tramping the pavement alone, 
she passed him on the other side on foot — was 
actually pushed against him: he looked round, 
and saw a young woman, carrying a small 
bag, disappearing’ in the crowd. “ There’s 
an air of Alice about said John to him- 
self, seeing her back only. But of course it 
couldn’t be Alice ; for her he must look in 
the carriages now! And what a fool he was: 
every young woman reminded him of the 
one he had lost ! Perhaps if he was to call 
the next day — Polly was a good-natured 
creature — he might hear some news of her. 

It had been a troubled fortnight with Mrs. 
Greatorex. She wished much that she could 
have talked to her husband more freely, but 
she had not learned to feel at home with him. 
Yet he had been kinder and more attentive 
than usual all the time, so much so that 
Letty thought with herself — if she gave him 


THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 59 

a boy, he would certainly return to his first 
devotion. She said hoy^ because any one 
might see he cared little for Phosy. She 
had never discovered that he was disap- 
pointed in herself, but, since her disregard 
of his wishes had brought evil upon her, 
she had begun to suspect that he had some 
ground for being dissatisfied with her. She 
never dreamed of his kindness as the effort 
of a conscientious nature to make the best 
of what could not now be otherwise helped. 
Her own poverty of spirit and lack of wortli 
achieved, she knew as little of as she did of 
the riches of Michael the archangel. One 
must have begun to gather wisdom before 
he can see his own folly. 

That evening she was seated alone in the 
drawing-room, her husband having left her 
to smoke his cigar, when the butler entered 
and informed her that Alice had returned, 
but was behaving so oddly that they did not 
know what to do with her. Asking wherein 
her oddness consisted, and learning that it 
was mostly in silence and tears, she was not 
sorry to gather that some disappointment 
had befallen her, and felt considerable curi- 
osity to know what it was. She therefore told 
him to send her upstairs. 

Meantime Polly, the housemaid, seeing 
plainly enough from her return in the middle 
of her holiday, and from her utter dejection, 
that Alice’s expectations had been frustrated, 
and cherishing no little resentment against 


60 THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 


her because of her uppisliness on the first 
news of her good fortune, had been un- 
generous enough to take her revenge in a 
way as stinging in effect as bitter in inten- 
tion ; for she loudly protested that no 
amount of such luck as she pretended to 
suppose in Alice’s possession, would have 
induced her to behave herself so that a hand- 
some honest fellow like John Jephson should 
be driven to despise her, and take up with 
her betters. When her mistress’s message 
came, Alice was only too glad to find refuge 
from the kitchen in the drawing-room. 

The moment she entered, she fell on her 
knees at the foot of the couch on which her 
mistress lay, covered her face with her hands, 
and sobbed grievously. 

Nor was the change more remarkable in 
her bearing than in her person. She was 
pale and worn, and had a hunted look — was 
in fact a mere shadow of what she had been. 
For a time her mistress found it impossible 
to quiet her so as to draw from her her 
story: tears and sobs combined with repug- 
nance to hold her silent. 

“Oh, ma’am!” she burst out at length, 
wringing her hands, “ how ever can I tell 
you ? You will never speak to me again. 
Little did I think such a disgrace was 
waiting me I ” 

“ It was no fault of yours if you were mis- 
informed,” said her mistress, “ or that your 
uncle was not the rich man you fancied.” 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 61 

“ Oh, ma’am, there was no mistake there ! 
He was more than twice as rich as I fancied. 
If he had only died a beggar, and left things 
as they was ! ” 

‘‘ Then he didn’t leave it • to his nephews 
and nieces as they told you? — Well, there’s 
no disgrace in that.” 

“ Oh ! but he did, ma’am : that was all 
right; no mi^ake there either, ma’am. — And 
to think o’ me behavin’ as I did — to you and 
master as was so good to me ! Who’ll ever 
take any more notice of me now, after 
what has come out — as I’m sure I no more 
dreamed on than the child unborn ! ” 

An agonized burst of fresh weeping fol- 
lowed, and it was with prolonged difficulty, 
and by incessant questioning, that Mrs. 
(Ireatorex at length drew from her the 
following facts. 

Before Alice and her brother could receive 
the legacy to which they laid claim, it was 
necessary to produce certain documents, the 
absence of which, as of any proof to take 
their place, led to the unavoidable publication 
of a fact previously known only to a living 
few — namely, that the father and mother of 
Alic®' Hopwood had never been married, 
which fact deprived them of the smallest 
claim on the legacy, and fell like a millstone 
upon Alice and her pride. From the height 
of her miserable arrogance she fell prone — 
not merely hurled back into the lowly con- 
dition from which she had raised her head 


62 


THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 


only to despise it with base unrighteousness, 
and to adopt and reassert the principles she 
had abhorred when they affected herself— not 
merely this, but, in her own judgment at 
least, no longer the respectable member of 
society she had hitherto been justified in 
supposing herself. The relation of her 
father and mother she felt overshadow her 
with a disgrace unfathomable — the more 
overwhelming that it cast her from the gates 
of the Paradise she had seemed on the point 
of entering : her fall she measured by the 
height of the social ambition she had 
cherished, and had seemed on the point of 
attaining. But it is not an evil that the 
devil’s money, which this legacy had from 
the first proved to Alice, should turn to a 
hot cinder in the hand. Rarely had a more 
haughty spirit than hers gone before a fall, 
and rarely has the fall been more sudden 
or more abject. And the consciousness of 
the behaviour into which her false riches 
had seduced her, changed the whip of her 
chastisement into scorpions. Worst of all, 
she had insulted her lover as beneath her 
notice, and the next moment had found her- 
self too vile for his. Judging by herself, 
in the injustice of bitter humiliation she 
imagined him scoffing with his mates at 
the base-born menial who would set up for 
a fine lady. But had she been more worthy 
of honest John, she would have understood 
him better. As it was, no really good for- 


THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 63 

tune could have befallen her hut such as 
now seemed to her the depth of evil fortune. 
Without humiliation to prepare the way for 
humility, she must have become capable of 
more and more baseness, until she lost all 
that makes life worth having. 

When Mrs. Great ore x had given her what 
consolation she found handy, and at length 
dismissed her, the girl, unable to endure her 
own company, sought the nursery, where 
she caught Sophy in her arms and embraced 
her with fervour. Never in her life having 
been the object of any such display of feel- 
ing, Phosy was much astonished : when 
Alice had set her down and she had resumed 
her seat by the fireside, she went on staring 
for a while — and then a strange sort of 
miming ensued. 

It was Phosy ’s habit — one less rare with 
children than may by most be imagined — 
to do what she could to enter into any 
state of mind whose shows were sufficiently 
marked for her observation. She sought 
to lay hold of the feeling that produced the 
expression : less than the reproduction of a 
similar condition in her own imaginative 
sensorium, subject to her leisurely examina- 
tion, would in no case satisfy the little meta- 
physician. But what was indeed very odd 
was the means she took for arriving at the 
sympathetic knowledge she desired. As if 
she had been the most earnest student of dra- 
matic expression through the facial muscles, 


64 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

she would sit watching the countenance of 
the object of her solicitude, all the time, 
with full consciousness, fashioning her own 
as nearly as she could into the lines and 
forms of the other : in proportion as she 
succeeded, the small psychologist imagined 
she lelt in herself the condition that produced 
the phenomenon she observed — as if the 
shape of her face cast inward its shadow upon 
her mind, and so revealed to it, through the 
two faces, what was moving and shaping in 
the mind of the other. 

In the present instance, having at length, 
after modelling and remodelling her face like 
that of a gutta-percha doll for some time, 
composed it finally into the best correspond- 
ence she could effect, she sat brooding for 
a while, with Alice’s expression as it were 
frozen upon it. Gradually the forms as- 
sumed melted away, and allowed her still, 
solemn face to look out from behind them. 
The moment this evanishment was complete, 
she rose and went to Alice, where she sat 
staring into the fire, unconscious of the 
scrutiny she had been undergoing, and, 
looking up in her face, took her thumb out 
of her mouth, and said, 

‘‘ Is the Lord chastening Alice ? I wish 
he would chasten Phosy.” 

Her face was calm as that of the Sphinx ; 
there was no mist in the depth of her gray 
eyes, not a cloud on the wide heaven of her 
forehead. 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 65 

Was the child crazed ? What could the 
atom mean, with her big eyes looking right 
into her ? Alice never had understood her : 
it were indeed strange if the less should 
comprehend the greater ! She was not yet 
capable of recognising the word of the Lord 
in the mouth of babes and sucklings. But 
there was a something in Phosy’s face besides 
its calmness and unintelligibility. What it 
was Alice could never have told — yet it did 
her good. She lifted the child on her lap. 
There she soon fell asleep. Alice undressed 
her, laid her in her crib, and went to bed 
herself. 

But, weary as she was, she had to rise 
again before she got to sleep. Her mistress 
was again taken ill. Doctor and nurse were 
sent for in hot haste ; hansom cabs came and 
went throughout the night, like noisy moths 
to the one lighted house in the street ; there 
were soft steps within, and doors were gently 
opened and shut. The waters of Mara had 
risen and filled the house. 

Towards morning they were ebbing slowly 
away. Letty did not know that her husband 
was watching by her bedside. The street 
was quiet now. So was the house. Most of 
its people had been up throughout the night, 
but now they had all gone to bed except the 
strange nurse and Mr. Grreatorex. 

It was the morning of Christmas Day, and 
little Phosy knew it in every cranny of her 
soul. She was not of those who had been 


G6 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

up all night, and now she was awake, early 
and wide, and the moment she awoke she 
was speculating : He was coming to-day — 
how would he come ? Where should she find 
the baby Jesus ? And when would he come? 
In the morning, or the afternoon, or in the 
evening ? Could such a grief be in store for 
her as that he would not appear until night, 
when she would be again in bed ? But she 
would not sleep till all hope was gone. 
Would everybody be gathered to meet him, 
or would he show himself to one after 
another, each alone ? Then her turn would 
be last, and oh, if he would come to the 
nursery ! But perhaps he would not appear 
to her at all ! — for was she not one whom the 
Lord did not care to chasten ? 

Expectation grew and wrought in her 
until she could lie in bed no longer. 
Alice was fast asleep. It must be early, but 
whether it was yet light or not she could 
not tell for the curtains. Anyhow she would 
get up and dress, and then she would be 
ready for Jesus whenever he should come. 
True, she was not able to dress herself very 
well, but he would know, and would not 
mind. She made all the haste she could, 
consistently with taking pains, and was soon 
attired after a fashion. 

She crept out of the room and down the 
stair. The house was very still. What if 
Jesus should come and find nobody awake? 
Would he go again and give them no 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 67 

presents? She couldn’t expect any herself 
— but might he not let her take theirs for 
the rest ? Perhaps she ought to wake them 
all, but she dared not without being sure. 

On the last landing above the first floor, 
she saw, by the low gaslight at the end of 
the corridor, an unknown figure pass the foot 
of the stair : could she have anything to do 
with the marvel of the day ? Tiie woman 
looked up, and Phosy dropped the question. 
Yet she might be a charwoman, whose assist- 
ance the expected advent retidered necessary. 
When she reached the bottom of the stair 
she saw her disappearing in her step-mother’s 
room. That she did not like. It was the 
one room into which she could not go. But, 
as the house was so still, she would search 
everywhere else, and if she did not find him, 
would then sit down in the hall and wait 
for him. 

The room next the foot of the stair, and 
opposite her step-mother’s, was the spare 
room, with which she associated ideas of 
state and grandeur : where better could she 
begin than at the guest-chamber ? — There ! 
— Could it be? Yes! — Through the chink of 
the scarce-closed door she saw light. Either 
he was already there or there they were ex- 
pecting him. From that moment she felt 
as if lifted out of the body. Far exalted 
above all dread, she peeped modestly in, and 
then entered. Beyond the foot of tlie bed, 
a candle stood on a little low table, but 


68 THE GIETS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

nobody was to be seen. There was a stool 
lear the table : she would sit on it by the 
candle, and wait for him. But ere she 
reached it, she caught sight of something 
upon the bed that drew her thither. She 
stood entranced. — Could it be? — It might be. 
Perhaps he had left it there while he went 
into her mamma’s room with something for 
her. — The loveliest of dolls ever imagined ! 
She drew nearer. The light was low, and 
the shadows were many : she could not be 
sure what it was. But when she had gone 
close up to it, she concluded with certainty 
that it was in very truth a doll — perhaps 
intended for her — but beyond doubt the most 
exquisite of dolls. She dragged a chair to 
the bed, got up, pushed her little arms softly 
under it, and drawing it gently to her, slid 
down with it. When she felt her feet firm 
on the floor, filled with the solemn composure 
of holy awe she carried the gift of the child 
Jesus to the candle, that she might the better 
admire its beauty and know its preciousness. 
But the light had no sooner fallen upon it 
than a strange undefinable doubt awoke 
within her. Whatever it was, it was the 
very essence of loveliness — the tiny darling 
with its alabaster face, and its delicately 
modelled hands and fingers ! A long night- 
gown covered all the rest. — Was it possible? 
— Could it be ? — Yes, indeed ! it must be — it 
could be nothing else than a real baby ! 
What a goose she had been ! Of course it 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 69 

was baby Jesns himself! — for was not this 
his very own Christmas Day on which he was 
always born ? — If she had felt awe of his 
gift before, what a grandeur of adoring love, 
what a divine dignity possessed her, holding 
in her arms the very child himself! One 
shudder of bliss passed through her, and in 
an agony of possession she clasped the baby 
to her great heart — then at once became still 
with the satisfaction of eternity, with the 
peace of God. She sat down on the stool, 
near the little table, with her back to the 
candle, that its rays should not fall on the 
eyes of the sleeping Jesus and wake him : 
there she sat, lost in the very majesty of 
bliss, at once the mother and the slave of 
the Lord Jesus. 

She sat for a time still as marlJe waiting 
for marble to awake, heedful as tenderest 
woman not to rouse him before his time, 
though her heart was swelling with the eager 
petition that he would ask his Father to be 
as good as chasten her. And as she sat, she 
began, after her wont, to model her face to 
the likeness of his, that she might understand 
his stillness — the absolute peace that dwelt 
on his countenance. But as she did so, again 
a sudden doubt invaded her : Jesus lay so 
very still —never moved, never opened his 
pale eye-lids ! And now set thinking, she 
noted that he did not breathe. She had seen 
babies asleep, and their breath came and 
went — their little bosoms heaved up and 


70 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

down, and sometimes they would smile, and 
sometimes they would moan and sigh. But 
Jesus did none of all these things : was it not 
strange ? And then he was cold — oh, so cold ! 

A blue silk coverlid lay on the bed : she 
half rose and dragged it off, and contrived to 
wind it around herself and the baby. Sad 
at heart, very sad, but undismayed, she sat 
and watched him on her lap. 


CHAPTER YL 

Meantime the morning of Christmas Day 
grew. The light came and filled the house. 
The sleepers slept late, but at length they 
stirred. Alice awoke last — from a troubled 
sleep, in which the events of the night 
mingled with her own lost condition and 
destiny. After all Polly had been kind, she 
thought, and got Sophy up without dis- 
turbing her. 

She had been but a few minutes down, 
when a strange and appalling rumour made 
itself — I cannot say audible, hut — somehow 
known through the house, and every one 
hurried up in horrible dismay. 

The nurse had gone into the spare room, 
and missed the little dead thing she had laid 
there. The bed was between her and Phosy, 
and she never saw her. The doctor had been 
sharp with her about something the night 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 71 

before : she now took her revenge in sus- 
picion of him, and after a hasty and fruitless 
visit of inquiry to the kitchen, hurried to 
Mr. Greatorex. 

The servants crowded to the spare room, 
and when their master, incredulous indeed, 
yet shocked at the tidings brought him, 
hastened to the spot, he found them all in 
the room, gathered at the foot of the bed. A 
little sunlight filtered through the red win- 
dow-curtains, and gave a strange pallid ex- 
pression to the flame of the candle, which had 
now burned very low. At first he saw 
nothing but the group of servants, silent, 
motionless, with heads leaning forward, in- 
tently gazing : he had come just in time : 
another moment and they would have ruined 
the lovely sight. He stepped forward, and 
saw Phosy, half shrouded in blue, the candle 
behind illuminating the hair she had found 
too rebellious to the brush, and making of 
it a faint aureole about her head and white 
face, whence cold and sorrow had driven all 
the flush, rendering it colourless as that upon 
her arm which had never seen the light. 
She had pored on the little face until she 
knew death, and now she sat a speechless 
mother of sorrow, bending in the dim light 
of the tomb over the body of her holy infant. 

How it was I cannot tell, but the moment 
her father saw her she looked up, and the 
spell of her dumbness broke. 

“ Jesus is dead,” she said, slowly and sadly. 


72 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

but with perfect calmness. “ He is dead,” 
slie repeated. “ He came too early, and there 
was no one up to take care of him, and he’s 
dead — dead — dead ! ” 

But as she spoke the last words, the ^rozen 
lump of agony gave way ; the well of her 
heart suddenly filled, swelled, overflowed ; 
the last word was half sob, half shriek of 
utter despair and loss. 

Alice darted forward and took the dead 
baby tenderly from her. The same moment 
lier father raised the little mother and clasped 
her to his bosom. Her arms went round his 
neck, her head sank on his shoulder, and sob- 
bing in grievous misery, yet already a little 
comforted, he bore her from the room. 

“ No, no, Phosy ! ” they heard him say, 
“ Jesus is not dead, thank God. It is only 
your little brother that hadn’t life enough, 
and is gone back to God for more.” 

Weeping the women went down the stairs. 
Alice’s tears were still flowing, when John 
Jephson entered. Her own troubles forgotten 
in the emotion of the scene she had just 
witnessed, she ran to his arms and wept on 
his bosom. 

John stood as one astonied. 

“ 0 Lord ! this is a Christmas ! ” he sighed 
at last. 

‘‘ Oh John ! ” cried Alice, and tore herself 
from his embrace, “ I forgot ! You'll never 
speak to me again, John ! Don’t do it, 
John.” 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. *73 

And with the words she gave a stifled cry, 
and fell a weeping again, behind her two 
shielding hands. 

“Why, Alice! — you ain’t married, are 
you?” gasped John, to whom that was the 
only possible evil. 

“ No, John, and never shall be : a respect- 
able man like you would never think of 
looking twice at a poor girl like me 1 ” 

“ Let’s have one more look anyhow,” said 
John, drawing her hands from her face. 
“ Tell me what’s the matter, and if there’s 
anything can be done to right you. I’ll work 
day and night to do it, Alice.” 

“ There’s nothing can be done, John,” re- 
plied Alice, and would again have floated out 
on the ocean of her misery, but in spite of 
wind and tide, that is sobs and tears, she 
held on by the shore at his entreaty, and 
told her tale, not even omitting the fact that 
when she went to the eldest of the cousins, 
inheriting through the misfortune of her and 
her brother so much more than their ex- 
pected share, and “ demeaned herself” to beg 
a little help for her brother, who was dying 
of consumption, he had all but ordered her 
out of the house, swearing he had nothing 
to do with her or her brother, and saying she 
ought to be ashamed to show her face. 

“ And that when we used to make mud 
pies together I ” concluded Alice with in- 
dignation. “ There, John 1 you have it all,” 
she added. “ And now ? ” 


74 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

Witli the word she gave a deep, liumbly 
questioning look into his honest eyes. 

“ Is that all, Alice ? ” he asked. 

‘‘ Yes, John ; ain’t it enough ? ” she 
returned. 

“ More’n enough,” answered John. “ I 
swear to you, Alice, you’re worth to me ten 
times what you would ha’ been, even if you’d 
ha’ had me, with ten thousand pounds in 
your ridicule. Why, my woman, I never 
saw you look one ’alf so ’an’some as you do 
now ! ” 

“ But the disgrace of it, John ! ” said Alice, 
hanging her head, and so hiding the pleasure 
that would dawn through all the mist of her 
misery. 

“Let your father and mother settle that 
betwixt ’em, Alice. ’Tain’t none o’ my busi- 
ness. Please God, we’ll do difierent. — When 
shall it be, my girl ? ” 

“ When you like, John,” answered Alice, 
without raising her head, thoughtfully. 

When she had withdrawn herself from the 
too rigorous embrace with which he received 
her consent, she remarked — 

“I do believe, John, money ain’t a good 
thing ! Sure as I live, with the very wind 
o’ that money, the devil entered into me. 
Didn’t you hate me, John ? Speak the truth 
now.” 

“No, Alice. I did cry a bit over you, 
though. You was possessed like.” 

“ I was possessed. I do believe if that 


THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 75 

money hadn’t been took from me, I’d never 
ha’ had you, John. Ain’t it awful to think 
on?” 

Well, no. O’ coorse ! How could ye ? ” 
said Jephson — with reluctance. 

‘‘ Now, John, don’t ye talk like that, for I 
won’t stand it. Don’t you go for to set me 
up again with excusin’ of mo. I’m a nasty 
conceited cat, I am — and all for nothing but 
mean pride.” 

“ Mind ye, ye’re mine now, Alice ; an’ 
what’s mine’s mine, an’ I won’t have it 
abused. I knows you twice the woman you 
was afore, and all the world couldn’t gi’ me 
such another Christmas-box — no, not if it 
was all gold watches and roast beef.” 

When Mr. Greatorex returned to his wife’s 
room, and thought to find her asleep as he 
had left her, he was dismayed to hear sounds 
of soft weeping from the bed. Some tone or 
stray word, never intended to reach her ear, 
had been enough to reveal the truth con- 
cerning her baby. 

“ Hush ! hush ! ” he said, with more love 
in his heart than had moved there for many 
months, and therefore more in his tone than 
she had heard for as many ; — “ if you cry 
you will be ill. Hush, my dear ! ” 

In a moment, ere he could prevent her, she 
had flung her arms around his neck as he 
stooped over her. 

“ Husband ! husband ! ” she cried, “ is it 
my fault ? ” 


76 THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 

‘‘ You behaved perfectly,” he returned. 
“ No woman could have been braver.” 

‘‘ Ah, but I wouldn’t stay at home when 
you wanted me.” 

“ Never mind that now, my child,” he 
said. 

At the word she pulled his face down to 
hers. 

‘‘ I have you^ and I don’t care,” he added. 

“ Do you care to have me ? ” she said, with 
a sob that ended in a loud cry. ‘‘ Oh ! I 
don’t deserve it. But I will be good after 
this. I promise you I will.” 

“ Then you must begin now, my darling. 
You must lie perfectly still, and not cry a 
bit, or you will go after the baby, and I shall 
be left alone.” 

She looked up at him with such a light in 
her face as he had never dreamed of there 
before. He had never seen her so lovely. 
Then she withdrew her arms, repressed her 
tears, smiled, and turned her face away. He 
put her hands under the clothes, and in a 
minute or two she was again fast asleep. 


CHAPTER VII. 

That day, when Phosy and her father had 
sat down to their Christmas dinner, he rose 
again, and taking her up as she sat, chair 
and all, set her down close to him, on the 


THE GIFTS OP THE CHILD CHRIST. 77 

other side of the corner of the table. It was 
the first of a new covenant between them. 
The father’s eyes having been suddenly 
opened to her character and preciousness, as 
well as to his own neglected duty in regard 
to her, it was as if a well of life had burst 
forth at his feet. And every day, as he 
looked in her face and talked to her, it was 
with more and more respect for what he 
found in her, with growing tenderness for 
her predilections, and reverence for the 
divine idea enclosed in her ignorance, for her 
childish wisdom, and her calm seeking — until 
at length he would have been horrified at the 
thought of training her up in his way : had 
she not a way of her own to go — following — 
not the dead Jesus, but Him who liveth for 
evermore ? In the endeavour to help her, he 
had to find his own position towards the 
truth ; and the results were weighty. — Nor 
did the child’s influence work forward merely. 
In his intercourse with her he was so often 
reminded of his first wife, and that with the 
gloss or comment of a childish reproduction, 
that his memories of her at length grew a 
little tender, and through the child he began 
to understand the nature and worth of the 
mother. In her child she had given him 
what she could not be herself. Unable to 
keep up with him, she had handed him her 
baby, and dropped on the path. 

Nor was little Sophy his only comfort. 
Through their common loss and her bus- 


78 THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST. 

band’s tenderness, Letty began to grow a 
woman. And her growth was the more 
rapid that, himself taught through Phosy, 
her husband no longer desired to make her 
adopt his tastes, and judge with his experi- 
ences, but, as became the elder and the tried, 
entered into her tastes and experiences — be- 
came, as it were, a child again with her, 
that, through the thing she was, he might 
help the thing she had to be. 

As soon as she was able to bear it, he told 
her the story of the dead Jesus, and with the 
tale came to her heart love for Phosy. She 
had lost a son for a season, but she had 
gained a daughter for ever. 

Such were the gifts the Christ-child 
brought to one household that Christmas. 
And the days of the mourning of that house- 
hold were ended. 


THE HISTOEY OF PHOTOGEN AND 
NYCTEEIS. 

A DAY AND NIGHT MAHECHEN, 


CHAPTER I. 

WATHO. 

There was once a witch who desired to know 
everything. But the wiser a witch is, the 
harder she knocks her head against the wall 
when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, 
and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared 
for nothing in itself — only for knowing it. 
She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf 
had made her cruel. 

She was tall and graceful, with a white 
skin, red hair, and black eyes, which had a 
red fire in them. She was straight and 
strong, but now and then would fall bent 
together, shudder, and sit for a moment with 
her head turned over her shoulder, as if the 
wolf had got out of her mind on to her back. 


80 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 


CHAPTER IL 

AURORA. 

This witch got two ladies to visit her. One 
of them belonged to the court, and her hus- 
band had been sent on a far and difficult 
embassy. The other was a young widow 
whose husband had lately died, and who had 
since lost her sight. Watho lodged them in 
different parts of her castle, and they did not 
know of each other’s existence. 

The castle stood on the side of a hill slop- 
ing gently down into a narrow valley, in 
which was a river, with a pebbly channel and 
a continual song. The garden went down to 
the bank of the river, enclosed by high walls, 
which crossed the river and there stopped. 
Each wall had a double row of battle- 
ments, and between the rows was a narrow 
walk. 

In the topmost story of the castle the Lady 
Aurora occupied a spacious apartment of 
several large rooms looking southward. The 
windows projected oriel-wise over the garden 
below, and tliere was a splendid view from 
them both up and down and across the 
river. The opposite side of the valley was 
steep, but not very high. Far away snow- 
peaks were visible. These rooms Aurora 
seldom left, but their airy spaces, the bril- 


VESPER. 


81 


liant landscape and sky, the plentiful sun- 
light, the musical instruments, books, pictures, 
curiosities, with the company of Watho who 
made herself charming, precluded all dulness. 
She had venison and feathered game to eat, 
milk and pale sunny sparkling wine to drink. 

She had hair of the yellow gold, waved 
and rippled ; her skin was fair, not white 
like Watho’s, and her eyes were of the blue 
of the heavens when bluest ; her features 
were delicate but strong, her mouth large 
and finely curved, and haunted with smiles. 


CHAPTER III. 

VESPER. 

Behind the castle the hill rose abruptly ; the 
north-eastern tower, indeed, was in contact 
with the rock, and communicated with the 
interior of it. For in the rock was a series 
of chambers, known only to Watho and the 
one servant whom she trusted, called Falca. 
Some former owner had constructed these 
chambers after the tomb of an Egyptian 
king, and probably with the same design, 
for in the centre of one of them stood what 
could only be a sarcophagus, but that and 
others were walled off. The sides and roofs 
of them were carved in low relief, and curi- 
ously painted. Here the witch lodged the 

G 


82 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

blind lady, whose name wns Yesper. Her 
eyes were black, with long black lashes ; 
her skin had a look of darkened silver, but 
was of purest tint and grain ; her hair was 
black and fine and straight-flowing ; her 
features were exquisitely formed, and if less 
beautiful yet more lovely from sadness ; she 
always looked as if she wanted to lie down 
and not rise again. She did not know she 
was lodged in a tomb, though now and then 
she wondered she never touched a window. 
There were many couches, covered with 
richest silk, and soft as her own cheek, for 
her to lie upon ; and the carpets were so 
thick, she might have cast herself down any- 
where — as befitted a tomb. The place was 
dry and warm, and cunningly pierced for 
air, so that it was always fresh, and lacked 
only sunlight. There the witch fed her 
upon milk, and wine dark as a carbuncle, 
and pomegranates, and purple grapes, and 
birds that dwell in marshy places ; and she 
played to her mournful tunes, and caused 
wailful violins to attend her, and told her 
sad tales, thus holding her ever in an atmo- 
sphere of sweet sorrow. 


CHAPTER ly. 

PHOTOGEN. 

Watho at length had her desire, for witches 
often get what they want : a splendid boy 
was born to the fair Aurora. Just as the sun 
rose, he opened his eyes. Watho carried him 
immediately to a distant part of the castle, 
and persuaded the mother that he never cried 
but once, dying the moment he was born. 
Overcome with grief, Aurora left the castle 
as soon as she was able, and Watho never 
invited her again. 

And now the witch’s care was, that the 
child should not know darkness. Persist- 
ently she trained him until at last he never 
slept during the day, and never woke during 
the night. She never let him see anything 
black, and even kept all dull colours out of 
his way. Never, if she could help it, would 
she let a shadow fall upon him, watching 
against shadows as if they had been live 
things that would hurt him. All day he 
basked in the full splendour of the sun, in 
the same large rooms his mother had occu- 
pied. Watho used him to the sun, until he 
could hear more of it than any dark-blooded 
African. In the hottest of every day, she 
stript him and laid him in it, that he might 
ripen like a peach; and the boy rejoiced in 


84 HISTORY OF PHOTOOEN’ AND NYCTERIS. 

it, and would resist being dressed again. 
She brought all her knowledge to bear on 
making his muscles strong and elastic and 
swiftly responsive — that his soul, she said 
laughing, might sit in every fibre, be all in 
every part, and awake the moment of call. 
His hair was of the red gold, but his eyes 
grew darker as he grew, until they were as 
black as Yesper’s. He was the merriest of 
creatures, always laughing, always loving, 
for a moment raging, then laughing afresh. 
Watho called him Photogen. 


CHAPTER V. 

NYCTERIS. 

Five or six months after the birth of Pho- 
togen, the dark lady also gave birth to a 
baby : in the windowless tomb of a blind 
mother, in the dead of night, under the feeble 
rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe, a girL 
came into the darkness with a wail. And 
just as she was born for the first time, Yesper 
was born for the second, and passed into a 
world as unknown to her as this was to her 
child — who would have to be born yet again 
before she could see her mother. 

Watho called her Nycteris, and she grew 
as like Yesper as possible — in all but one 
particular. She had the same dark skin, 


NYCTERIS. 


85 


dark eyelashes and brows, dark bair, and 
gentle sad look ; but she had just the eyes 
of Aurora, the mother of Photogen, and if 
they grew darker as she grew older, it was 
only a darker blue. Watho, with the help 
of Falca, took the greatest possible care of 
her — in every way consistent with her plans, 
that is, — the main point in which was that 
she should never see any light but what 
came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, 
and indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, 
grew both larger and more sensitive ; her 
eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too 
large. Under her dark hair and forehead 
and eyebrows, they looked like two breaks 
in a cloudy night-sky, through which peeped 
the heaven where the stars and no clouds 
live. She was a sadly dainty little creature. 
No one in the world except those two was 
aware of the being of the little bat. Watho 
trained her to sleep during the day, and wake 
during the night. She taught her music, in 
which she was herself a proficient, and taught 
her scarcely anything else. 


86 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 


CHAPTER VI. 

HOW PHOTOGEN GREW. 

The hollow in which the castle of Watho 
lay, was a cleft in a plain rather than a 
valley among hills, for at the top of its steep 
sides, both north and south, was a table-land, 
large and wide. It was covered with rich 
grass and flowers, with here and there a 
wood, the outlying colony of a great forest. 
These grassy plains were the finest hunting 
grounds in the world. Great herds of small, 
but fierce cattle, with humps and shaggy 
manes, roved about them, also antelopes and 
gnus, and the tiny roedeer, while the woods 
were swarming with wild creatures. The 
tables of the castle were mainly supplied 
from them. The chief of Watho’s huntsmen 
was a fine fellow, and when Photogen began 
to outgrow the training she could give him, 
she handed him over to Fargu. He with a 
will set about teaching him all he knew. 
He got him pony after pony, larger and 
larger as he grew, every one less manageable 
than that which had preceded it, and ad- 
vanced him from pony to horse, and from 
horse to horse, until he was equal to any- 
thing in that kind which the country pro- 
duced. In similar fashion he trained him to 
the use of bow and arrow, substituting every 


HOW PHOTOGEN GREW. 


87 


three months a stronger bow and longer 
arrows ; and soon he became, even on horse- 
back, a wonderful archer. He was but four- 
teen when he killed his first bull, causing 
jubilation among the huntsmen, and, indeed, 
through all the castle, for there too he was the 
favourite. Every day, almost as soon as the 
sun was up, he went out hunting, and would 
in general be out nearly the whole of the day. 
But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one 
commandment, namely, that Photogen should 
on no account, whatever the plea, be out until 
sundown, or so near it as to wake in him the 
desire of seeing what was going to happen ; 
and this commandment Fargu was anxiously 
careful not to break ; for, although he would 
not have trembled had a whole herd of bulls 
come down upon him, charging at full speed 
across the level, and not an arrow left in his 
quiver, he was more than afraid of his mis- 
tress. When she looked at him in a certain 
way, he felt, he said, as if his heart turned 
to ashes in his breast, and what ran in his 
veins was no longer blood, but milk and 
water. So that, ere long, as Photogen grew 
older, Fargu began to tremble, for he found 
it steadily growing harder to restrain him. 
So full of life was he, as Fargu said to his 
mistress, much to her content, that he was 
more like a live thunderbolt than a human 
being. He did not know what fear was, and 
that not because be did not know danger ; 
for he had had a severe laceration from the 


88 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

razor-like tusk of a boar — whose spine, how- 
ever, he had severed with one blow of his 
hunting-knife, before Fargu could reach him 
with defence. When he would spur his horse 
into the midst of a herd of bulls, carrying 
only his bow and his short sword, or shoot 
an arrow into a herd, and go after it as if to 
reclaim it for a runaway shaft, arriving in 
time to follow it with a spear-thrust before 
the wounded animal knew which way to 
charge, Fargu thought with terror how it 
would be when he came to know the tempta- 
tion of the huddle-spot leopards, and the 
knife-clawed lynxes, with which the forest 
was haunted. For the boy had been so 
steeped in the sun, from childhood so satu- 
rated with his influence, that he looked upon 
every danger from a sovereign height of 
courage. Wlien, therefore, he was approach- 
ing his sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to 
beg of Watho that she would lay her com- 
mands upon the youth himself, and release 
him from responsibility for him. One might 
as soon hold a tawny-maned lion as Photogen, 
he said. Watho called the youth, and in the 
presence of Fargu laid her command upon 
him never to be out when the rim of the sun 
should touch the horizon, accompanying the 
prohibition with hints of consequences, none 
the less awful that they were obscure. Pho- 
togen listened respectfully, but, knowing 
neither the taste of fear nor the temptation of 
the night, her wo^:ds were but sounds to him. 


CHAPTER YIL 


HOW NYCTERIS GREW. 

The little education she intended Nycteris to 
have, Watho gave her by word of mouth. 
Not meaning she should have light enough 
to read by, to leave other reasons unmen- 
tioned, she never put a book in her hands. 
Nycteris, however, saw so much better than 
Watho imagined, that the light she gave her 
was quite sufficient, and she managed to 
coax Falca into teaching her the letters, after 
which she taught herself to read, and Falca 
now and then brought her a child’s book. 
But her chief pleasure was in her instru- 
ment. Her very fingers loved it, and would 
wander about over its keys like feeding sheep. 
She was not unhappy. She knew nothing 
of the world except the tomb in which she 
dwelt, and had some pleasure in everything 
she did. But she de.dred, nevertheless, some- 
thing more or different. She did not know 
what it was, and the nearest she could come 
to expressing it to herself was — that she 
wanted more room. Watho and Falca would 
go from her beyond the shine of the lamp, 
and come again ; therefore surely there must 
be more room somewhere. As often as she 
was loft alone, she would fall to poring over 
the coloured bas-reliefs on the walls. These 


5)0 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

were intended to represent various of the 
powers of Nature under allegorical simili- 
tudes, and as nothing can be made that does 
not belong to the general scheme, she could 
not fail at least to imagine a flicker of re- 
lationship between some of them, and thus a 
shadow of the reality of things found its way 
to her. 

There*, was one thing, however, which 
moved and taught her more than all the 
rest — the lamp, namely, that hung from the 
ceiling, which she always saw alight, 
though she never saw the flame, only the 
slight condensation towards the centre of the 
alabaster globe. And besides the operation 
of the light itself after its kind, the indefinite- 
ness of the globe, and the softness of the 
light, giving her the feeling as if her eyes 
could go in and into its whiteness, were some- 
how also associated with the idea of space 
and room. She would sit for an hour to- 
gether gazing up at the lamp, and her 
heart would swell as she gazed. She would 
wonder what had hurt her, when she found 
her face wet with tears, and then would 
wonder how she could have been hurt with- 
out knowing it. She never looked thus at 
the lamp except when she was alone. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE LAMP. 

Watho having given orders, took it for 
granted they were obeyed, and that Falca 
was all night long with Nycteris, whose day 
it was. But Falca could not get into the 
habit of sleeping through the day, and would 
often leave her alone half the night. Then 
it seemed to Nycteris that the white lamp 
was watching over her. As it was never 
permitted to go out — while she was awake 
at least — Nycteris, except by shutting her 
eyes, knew less about darkness than she did 
about light. Also, the lamp being fixed high 
overhead, and in the centre of everything, 
she did not know much about shadows either. 
The few there were fell almost entirely on 
the floor, or kept like mice about the foot of 
the walls. 

Once, when she was thus alone, there came 
the noise of a far-off rumbling : she had 
never before heard a sound of which she did 
not know the origin, and here therefore was 
a new sign of something beyond these 
chambers. Then came a trembling, then a 
shaking ; the lamp dropped from the ceiling 
to the floor with a great crash, and she felt 
as if both her eyes were hard shut and both 
her hands over them. She concluded that it 


92 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

was the darkness that had made the rumbling 
and the shaking, and rushing into the room, 
had thrown down the lamp. She sat trem- 
bling. The noise and the shaking ceased, 
but the light did not return. The darkness 
had eaten it up ! 

Her lamp gone, the desire at once awoke 
to get out of her prison. She scarcely knew 
what out meant ; out of one room into 
another, where there was not even a dividing 
door, only an open arch, was all she knew of 
the world. But suddenly she remembered 
that she had heard Falca speak of the lamp 
going out : this must be what she had meant ? 
And if the lamp had gone out, where had it 
gone? Surely where Falca went, and like 
her it would come again. But she could not 
wait. The desire to go out grew irresistible. 
She must follow her beautiful lamp ! She 
must find it! She must see what it was 
about 1 

Now there was a curtain covering a recess 
in the wall, where some of her toys and 
gymnastic things were kept ; and from be- 
hind that curtain Watho and Falca always 
appeared, and behind it they vanished. How 
they came out of solid wall, she had not an 
idea, all up to the wall was open space, and 
all beyond it seemed wall ; but clearly the 
first and only thing she could do, was to feel 
her way behind the curtain. It was so dark 
that a cat could not have caught the largest 
of mice. Nycteris could see better than 


THE LAMP. 


93 


any cat, but now her great eyes were not of 
the smallest use to her. As she went she 
trod upon a piece of the broken lamp. She 
had never worn shoes or stockings, and the 
fragment, though, being of soft alabaster, it 
did not cut, yet hurt her foot. She did not 
know what it was, but as it had not been 
there before the darkness came, she suspected 
that it had to do with the lamp. She kneeled 
therefore, and searched with her hands, and 
bringing two large pieces together, recognized 
the shape of the lamp. Therewith it flashed 
upon her that the lamp was dead, that this 
brokenness was the death of which she had 
read without understanding, that the darkness 
had killed the lamp. What then could Falca 
have meant when she spoke of the lamp 
going out ? There was the lamp — dead, in- 
deed, and so changed that she would never 
have taken it for a lamp but for the shape ! 
No, it was not the lamp any more now it was 
dead, for all that made it a lamp was gone, 
namely, the bright shining of it. Then it 
must be the shine, the light, that had gone 
out !. That must be what Falca meant — and 
it must be somewhere in the other place in 
the wall. She started afresh after it, and 
groped her way to the curtain. 

Now she had never in her life tried to get 
out, and did not know how ; but instinctively 
she began to move her hands about over one 
of the walls behind the curtain, half expect- 
ing them to go into it, as she supposed 


94 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

Watho and Falca did. But. the wall repelled 
her with inexorable hardness, and she turned 
to the one opposite. In so doing, she set 
her foot upon an ivory die, and as it met 
sharply the same spot the broken alabaster 
had already hurt, she fell forward with her 
outstretched hands against the wall. Some- 
thing gave way, and she tumbled out of the 
cavern. 


CHAPTER IX. 

OUT. 

But alas ! out was very much like m, for the 
same enemy, the darkness, was here also. 
The next moment, however, came a great 
gladness — a firefly, which had wandered in 
from the garden. She saw the tiny spark 
in the distance. With slow pulsing ebb 
and throb of light, it came pushing itself 
through the air, drawing nearer and nearer, 
with that motion which more resembles 
swimming than flying, and the light seemed 
the source of its own motion. 

“ My lamp ! my lamp ! ” cried Nycteris. 
‘‘ It is the shiningness of my lamp, which the 
cruel darkness drove out. My good lamp 
has been waiting for me here all the time ! 
It knew I would come after it, and waited to 
take me with it.” 

She followed the firefly, which, like herself, 
was seeking the way out. If it did not know 


OUT. 


95 


the way, it was yet light ; and, because all 
light is one, any light may serve to guide to 
more light. If she was mistaken in thinking 
it the spirit of her lamp, it was of the same 
spirit as her lamp — and had wings. The gold- 
green jet-boat, driven by light, went throb- 
bing before her through a long narrow 
passage. Suddenly it rose higher, and the 
same moment Nycteris fell upon an ascending 
stair. She had never seen a stair before, and 
found going-up a curious sensation. Just as 
she reached what seemed the top, the fireily 
ceased to shine, and so disappeared. She 
was in utter darkness once more. But when 
we are following the light, even its extinction 
is a guide. If the firefly had gone on 
shining, Nycteris would have seen the stair 
turn, and would have gone up to Watho’s 
bedroom; whereas now, feeling straight be- 
fore her, she came to a latched door, which 
after a good deal of trying she managed to 
open — and stood in a maze of wondering 
perplexity, awe, and delight. What was it ? 
Was it outside of her, or something taking 
place in her head ? Before her was a very 
long and very narrow passage, broken up she 
could not tell how, and spreading out above 
and on all sides to an infinite height and 
breadth and distance — as if space itself were 
growing out of a trough. It was brighter 
than her rooms had ever been — brighter than 
if six alabaster lamps had been burning in 
them. There was a quantity of strange 


96 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

streaking and mottling about it, very different 
from the shapes on her walls. She was in a 
dream of pleasant perplexity, of delightful 
bewilderment. She could not tell whether 
she was upon her feet or drifting about like 
the firefly, driven by the pulses of an inward 
bliss. But she knew little as yet of her 
inheritance. Unconsciously she took one 
step forward from the threshold, and the girl 
who had been from her very birth a troglo- 
dyte, stood in the ravishing glory of a 
southern night, lit by a perfect moon — not 
the moon of our northern clime, but a moon 
like silver glowing in a furnace — a moon one 
could see to be a globe — not far off, a mere 
flat disc on the face of the blue, but hanging 
down halfway, and looking as if one could 
see all round it by a mere bending of the 
neck. 

“It is my lamp ! ” she said, and stood 
dumb with parted lips. She looked and felt 
as if she had been standing there in silent 
ecstasy from the beginning. 

“ No, it is not my lamp,” she said after 
a while ; “ it is the mother of all the lamps.” 

And with that she fell on her knees, and 
spread out her hands to the moon. She 
could not in the least have told what was in 
her mind, but the action was in reality just 
a begging of the moon to be what she was — 
that precise incredible splendour hung in the 
far-off roof, that very glory essential to the 
being of poor girls born and bred in caverns. 


OUT. 


97 


It was a resurrection — nay, a birth itself, to 
Nycteris. What the vast blue sky, studded 
with tiny sparks like the heads of diamond 
nails, could be ; what the moon, looking so 
absolutely content with light, — why, she 
knew less about them than you and T ! but 
the greatest of astronomers might envy the 
rapture of such a first impression at the age 
of sixteen. Immeasurably imperfect it was, 
but false the impression could not be, for she 
saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw 
indeed what many men are too wise to see. 

As she knelt, something softly flapped her, 
embraced her, stroked her, fondled her. She 
rose to her feet, but saw nothing, did not 
know what it was. It was likes t a woman’s 
breath. For she knew nothing of the air 
even, had never breathed the still newborn 
freshness of the world. Her breath had 
come to her only through long passages and 
spirals in the rock. Still less did she know 
of the air alive with motion — of that thrice 
blessed thing, the wind of a summer night. 
It was like a spiritual wine, filling her whole 
being with an intoxication of purest joy. To 
breathe was a perfect existence. It seemed 
to her the light itself she drew into her 
lungs. Possessed by the power of the 
gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the 
same moment annihilated and glorified. 

She was in the open passage or gallery 
that ran round the top of the garden walls, 
between the cleft battlements, but she did not 

H 


98 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

once look down to see what lay beneath. 
Her soul was drawn to the vault above hei‘, 
with its lamp and its endless room. At last 
she burst into tears, and her heart was re- 
lieved, as the night itself is relieved by its 
lightning and rain. 

And now she grew thoughtful. She must 
hoard this splendour! What a little ignor- 
ance her gaolers had made of her ! Life 
was a mighty bliss, and they had scraped 
hers to the bare bone 1 They must not know 
that she knew. She must hide her know- 
ledge — hide it even from her own eyes, 
keeping it close in her bosom, content to 
know that she had it, even when she could 
not brood on its presence, feasting her eyes 
with its glory. She turned from the vision, 
therefore, with a sigh of utter bliss, and with 
soft quiet steps and groping hands, stole back 
into the darkness of the rock. What was 
darkness or the laziness of Time’s feet to one 
who had seen what she had that night seen ? 
She was lifted above all weariness — above all 
wrong. 

When Falca entered, she uttered a cry of 
terror. But Nycteris called to her not to be 
afraid, and told her how there had come a 
rumbling and a shaking, and the lamp had 
fallen. Then Falca went and told her mis- 
tress, and within an hour a new globe hung 
in the place of the old one. Nycteris 
thought it did not look so bright and clear 
as the former, but she made no lamentation 


THE GREAT LAMP. 


yy 

over the change ; she was far too rich to heed 
it. For now, prisoner as she knew herself, 
her heart was full of glory and gladness ; at 
times she had to hold herself from jumping 
up, and going dancing and singing about 
the room. When she slept, instead of dull 
dreams, she had splendid visions. There 
were times, it is true, when she became rest- 
less, and impatient to look upon her riches, 
but then she would reason with herself, 
saying, “ What does it matter if I sit here 
for ages with my poor pale lamp, when out 
there a lamp is burning at which ten 
thousand little lamps are glowing with 
wonder ? ” 

She never doubted she had looked upon 
the day and the sun, of which she had read ; 
and always when she read of the day and the 
sun, she had the night and the moon in her 
mind ; and when she read of the night and 
the moon, she thought only of the cave and 
the lamp that hung there. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE GREAT LAMP. 

It was some time before she had a second 
opportunity of going out, for Falca, since the 
fall of the lamp, had been a little more 
careful, and seldom left her for long. But 
one night, having a little headache, Nycteris 


100 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

lay down upon her bed, and was lying with 
her eyes closed, when she heard Falca come 
to her, and felt she was bending over her. 
Disinclined to talk, she did not open her 
eyes, and lay quite still. Satisfied that she 
was asleep, Falca left her, moving so softly 
that her very caution made Nycteris open 
her eyes and look after her — ^just in time to 
see her vanish — through a picture, as it 
seemed, that hung on the wall a long way 
from the usual place of issue. She jumped 
up, her headache forgotten, and ran in the 
opposite direction ; got out, groped her way 
to the stair, climbed, and reached the top of 
the wall. — Alas ! the great room was not so 
light as the little one she had left. Why ? — 
Sorrow of sorrows ! the great lamp was gone ! 
Had its globe fallen? and its lovely light 
gone out upon great wings, a resplendent 
firefly, oaring itself through a yet grander 
and lovelier room ? She looked down to see 
if it lay anywhere broken to pieces on the 
carpet below ; but she could not even see 
the carpet. But surely nothing very dread- 
ful could have happened — no rumbling or 
shaking, for there were all the little lamps 
shining brighter than before, not one of 
them looking as if any unusual matter had 
befallen. What if each of those little lamps 
was growing into a big lamp, and after 
being a big lamp for a while, had to go 
out and grow a bigger lamp still — out 
there, beyond this out ? — Ah ! here was the 


THE GREAT LAMP. 


101 


living thing that would not he seen, come 
to her again — bigger to-night ! with such 
loving kisses, and such liquid strokings 
of her cheeks and forehead, gently tossing 
her hair, and delicately toying with it ! But 
it ceased, and all was still. Plad it gone 
out ? What would happen next ? Perhaps 
the little lamps had not to grow great lamps, 
but to fall one by one and go out first ? — 
With that, came from below a sweet scent, 
then another, and another. Ah, how de- 
licious ! Perhaps they were all coming to 
her only on their way out after the great 
lamp ! — Then came the music of the river, 
which she had been too absorbed in the sky 
to note the first time. What was it ? Alas ! 
alas ! another sweet living thing on its way 
out. They were all marching slowly out in 
long lovely file, one after the other, each 
taking its leave of her as it passed ! It must 
be so : here were more and more sweet 
sounds, following and fading ! The whole 
of the Out was going out again ; it was all 
going after the great lovely lamp ! She 
would be left the only creature in the soli- 
tary day! Was there nobody to hang up 
a new lamp for the old one, and keep the 
creatures from going? — She crept back to 
her rock very sad. She tried to comfort 
herself by saying that anyhow there would 
be room out there ; but as she said it she 
shuddered at the thought of empty room. 

When next she succeeded in getting out. 


102 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

a lialf-moon hung in the east : a new lamp 
had come, she thought, and all would be well. 

It would be endless to describe the phases 
of feeling through which N3mteris passed, 
more numerous and delicate than those of 
a thousand changing moons. A fresh bliss 
bloomed in her soul with every varying 
aspect of infinite nature. Ere long she 
began to suspect that the new moon was 
the old moon, gone out and come in again 
like herself ; also that, unlike herself, it 
wasted and grew again; that it was indeed 
a live thing, subject like herself to caverns, 
and keepers, and solitudes, escaping and 
shining when it could. Was it a prison 
like hers it was shut in ? and did it grow 
dark when the lamp left it ? Where could 
be the way into it ? — With that first she 
began to look below, as well as above and 
around her ; and then first noted the tops 
of the trees between her and the floor. 
There were palms with their red-fingered 
hands full of fruit ; eucalyptus trees crowded 
with little boxes of powder-puffs ; oleanders 
with their half-caste roses ; and orange trees 
with their clouds of young silver stars, and 
their aged balls of gold. Her eyes could see 
colours invisible to ours in the moonlight, 
and all these she could distinguish well, 
though at first she took them for the shapes 
and colours of the carpet of the great room. 
She longed to get down among them, now 
she saw they were real creatures, but she did 


THE GREAT LAMP. 


103 


not know how. She went along the whole 
length of the wall to the end that crossed the 
river, but found no way of going down. 
Above the river she stopped to gaze with 
awe upon the rushing water. She knew 
nothing of water but from what she drank 
and what she bathed in ; and, as the moon 
shone on the dark, swift stream, singing 
lustily as it flowed, she did not doubt the 
river was alive, a swift rushing serpent of 
life, going — out? — whither? And then she 
wondered if what was brought into her rooms 
had been killed that she might drink it, and 
have her bath in it. 

Once when she stepped out upon the wall, 
it was into the midst of a fierce wind. The 
trees were all roaring. Great clouds were 
rushing along the skies, and tumbling over 
the little lamps : the great lamp had not 
come yet. All was in tumult. The wind 
seized her garments and hair, and shook 
them as if it would tear them from her. 
What could she have done to make the gentle 
creature so angry ? Or was this another 
creature altogether — of the same kind, but 
hugely bigger, and of a very different temper 
and behaviour? But the whole place was 
angry ! Or was it that the creatures dwelling 
in it, the wind, and the trees, and the clouds, 
and the river, had all quarrelled, each with 
all the rest? Would the wljole come to con- 
fusion and disorder ? But, as she gazed 
wondering and disquieted, the moon, larger 


104 HISTORY OF PHOTOOEN AND NYCTERIS. 

than ever she had seen her, came lifting 
herself above the horizon to look, broad and 
red, as if she, too, were swollen with anger 
that she had been roused from her rest by 
their noise, and compelled to hurry up to see 
what her children were about, thus rioting in 
her absence, lest they should rack the whole 
frame of things. And as she rose, the loud 
wind grew quieter and scolded less fiercely, 
the trees grew stiller and moaned with a 
lower complaint, and the clouds hunted and 
hurled themselves less wildly across the sky. 
And as if she were pleased that her children 
obeyed her very presence, the moon giew 
smaller as she ascended the heavenly stair ; 
her puffed cheeks sank, her complexion grew 
clearer, and a sweet smile spread over her 
countenance, as peacefully she rose and rose. 
But there was treason and rebellion in her 
court; for, ere she reached the top of her 
great stairs, the clouds had assembled, for- 
getting their late wars, and very still they 
were as they laid their heads together and 
conspired. Then combining, and lying 
silently in wait until she came near, they 
threw themselves upon her, and swallowed 
her up. Down from the roof came spots of 
wet, faster and faster, and they wetted the 
cheeks of Nycteris ; and what could they be 
but the tears of the moon, crying because her 
children were smothering her ? Nycteris 
wept too, and not knowing what to think, 
stole back in dismay to her room. 


THE SUNSET. 


105 


The next time, she came out in fear and 
trembling. There was the moon still ! away 
in the west — poor, indeed, and old, and look- 
ing dreadfully worn, as if all the wild beasts 
in the sky had been gnawing at her — but 
there she was, alive still, and able to shine ! 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE SUNSET. 

Knowing nothing of darkness, or stars, or 
moon. Photogen spent his days in hunting. 
On a great white horse he swept over the 
grassy plains, glorying in the sun, fighting 
the wind, and killing the buffaloes. 

One morning, when he happened to be on 
the ground a little earlier than usual, and 
before his attendants, he caught sight of an 
animal unknown to him, stealing from a 
hollow into which the suniays had not yet 
reached. Like a swift shadow it sped over 
the grass, slinking southward to the forest. 
He gave chase, noted the body of a buffalo 
it had half eaten, and pursued it the harder. 
But with great leaps and bounds the creature 
shot farther and farther ahead of him, and 
vanished. Turning therefore defeated, he 
met Fargu, who had been following him as 
fast as his horse could carry him. 

“ What animal was that, Fargu ? ” he 
asked. “ How he did run ! ” 


106 HISTORY OF PHOTOOEN AND NYCTERIS. 

Fargu answered lie might be a leopard, 
hut lie rather thought from his pace and 
look that he was a young lion. 

“ What a coward he must be ! ” said 
Photogen. 

“ Don’t be too sure of that,” rejoined 
Fargu. “ He is one of the creatures the 
sun makes uncomfortable. As soon as the 
sun is down, he will be brave enough.” 

He had scarcely said it, when he repented 
nor did he regret it the less when he found 
that Photogen made no reply. But alas ! 
said was said. 

“ Then,” said Photogen to himself, “ that 
contemptible beast is one of the terrors of 
sundown, of which Madam Watho spoke ! ” 

He hunted all day, but not with his usual 
spirit. He did not ride so hard, and did 
not kill one buffalo. Fargu to his dismay 
observed also that he took every pretext for 
moving farther south, nearer to the forest. 
But all at once, the sun now sinking in the 
west, he seemed to change his mind, for he 
turned his horse’s head, and rode home so 
fast that the rest could not keep him in sight. 
When they arrived, they found his horse in 
the stable, and concluded that he had gone 
into the castle. But he had in truth set 
out again by the back of it. Crossing the 
river a good way up the valley, he re- 
ascended to the ground they had left, and 
just before sunset reached the skirts of the 
forebt. 


THE SUNSET. 


107 


The level orb shone straight in between 
the hare stems, and sayiog to himself he 
could not fail to find the beast, he rushed 
into the wood. But even as he entered, he 
turned, and looked to the west. The rim of 
the red was touching the horizon, all jagged 
with broken hills. “ Now,” said Photogen, 
we shall see ; ” but he said it in the face of 
a darkness he had not proved. The moment 
the sun began to sink among the spikes and 
saw-edges, with a kind of sudden flap at his 
heart a fear inexplicable laid hold of the 
youth ; and as he had never felt anything of 
the kind before, the very fear itself terrified 
him. As the sun sank, it rose like the 
shadow of the world, and grew deeper and 
darker. He could not even think what it 
might be, so utterly did it enfeeble him. 
When the last flaming scimitar-edge of the 
sun went out like a lamp, his horror seemed 
to blossom into very madness. Like the 
closing lids of an eye — for there was no 
twilight, and this night no moon — the terror 
and the darkness rushed together, and he 
knew them for one. He was no longer the 
man he had known, or rather thought him- 
self. The courage he had had was in no 
sense his own — he had only had courage, 
not been courageous ; it had left him, and 
he could scarcely stand — certainly not stand 
straight, for not one of his joints could he 
make stiff or keep from trembling. He was 
but a spark of the sun, in himself nothing. 


i08 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

The beast was behind him — stealing upon 
him ! He turned. All was dark in the 
wood, but to his fancy the darkness here 
and there broke into pairs of green eyes, 
and he had not the power even to raise 
his bow-hand from his side. In the strength 
of despair he strove to rouse courage enough 
— not to fight — that he did not even desire 
— but to run. Courage to flee home was all 
he could ever imagine, and it would not 
come. But what he had not, was ignomini- 
ously given him. A cry in the wood, half 
a screech, half a growl, sent him running 
like a boar-wounded cur. It was not even 
himself that ran, it was the fear that had 
come alive in his legs : he did not know 
that they moved. But as he ran he grew 
able to run — gained courage at least to be 
a coward. The stars gave a little light. 
Over the grass he sped, and nothing followed 
him. How fallen, how changed,” from the 
youth who had climbed the hill as the sun 
went down ! A mere contempt to himself, 
the self that contemned was a coward with 
the self it contemned ! There lay the shape- 
less black of a bufi’alo, humped upon the 
grass : he made a wide circuit, and swept 
on like a shadow driven in the wind. For 
the wind had arisen, and added to his terror : 
it blew from behind him. He reached the 
brow of the valley, and shot down the steep 
descent like a falling star. Instantly the 
whole upper country behind him arose and 


THE SUNSET. 


109 


pursued him ! The wind came howling after 
him, filled with screams, shrieks, yells, roars, 
laughter, and chattering, as if all the animals 
of the forest were careering with it. In his 
ears was a trampling rush, the thunder of 
the hoofs of the cattle, in career from every 
quarter of the wide plains to the brow of the 
hill above him ! He fled straight for the 
castle, scarcely with breath enough to pant. 

As he reached the bottom of the valley, 
the moon peered up over its edge. He had 
never seen the moon before — except in the 
daytime, when he had taken her for a thin 
bright cloud. She was a fresh terror to him 
— so ghostly ! so ghastly ! so gruesome ! — 
so knowing as she looked over the top of 
her garden-wall upon the world outside ! 
That was the night itself! the darkness alive 
— and after him 1 the horror of horrors 
coming down the sky to curdle his blood, 
and turn his brain to a cinder! He gave 
a sob, and made straight for the river, where 
it ran between the two walls, at the bottom 
of the garden. He plunged in, struggled 
through, clambered up the bank, and fell 
senseless on the grass. 


110 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE GARDEN. 

Although Nycteris took care not to stay out 
long at a time, and used every precaution, 
she could hardly have escaped discovery so 
long, had it not been that the strange attacks 
to which Watho was subject had been more 
frequent of late, and had at last settled into 
an illness which kept her to her bed. But 
whether from an access of caution or from 
suspicion, Falca, having now to be much 
with her mistress both day and night, took 
it at length into her head to fasten the door 
as often as she went by her usual place of 
exit ; so that one night, when Nycteris 
pushed, she found, to her surprise and 
dismay, that the wall pushed her again, and 
would not let her through ; nor with all 
her searching could she discover wherein lay 
the cause of the change. Then first she felt 
the pressure of her prison-walls, and turning, 
half in despair, groped her way to the picture 
where she had once seen Falca disappear. 
There she soon found the spot by pressing 
upon which the wall yielded. It let her 
through into a sort of cellar, where was a 
glimmer of light from a sky whose blue was 
paled by the moon. From the cellar she 
got into a long passage, into which the moon 


THE GARDEN. 


Ill 


was shining, and came to a door. She 
managed to open it, and, to her great joy, 
found herself in the other place, not on the 
top of the wall, however, but in the garden 
she had longed to enter. Noiseless as a 
fluffy moth she flitted away into the covert 
of the trees and shrubs, her bare feet wel- 
comed by the softest of carpets, which, by 
the very touch, her feet knew to be alive, 
whence it came that it was so sweet and 
friendly to them. A soft little wind was 
out among the trees, running now here, now 
there, like a child that had got its will. She 
went dancing over the grass, looking behind 
her at her shadow, as she went. At first 
she had taken it for a little black creature 
that made game of her, but when she per- 
ceived that it was only where she kept the 
moon away, and that every tree, however 
great and grand a creature, had also one of 
these strange attendants, she soon learned 
not to mind it, and by and by it became the 
source of as much amusement to her, as to 
any kitten its tail. It was long before she 
was quite at home with the trees, however. 
At one time they seemed to disapprove of 
her ; at another not even to know she was 
there, and to be altogether taken up with 
their own business. Suddenly, as she went 
from one to another of them, looking up 
with awe at the murmuring mystery of their 
branches and leaves, she spied one a little 
way off, which was very difi'erent from all 


112 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

the rest. It was white, and dark, and 
sparkling, and spread like a palm — a small 
slender palm, without much head ; and it 
grew very fast, and sang as it grew. But 
it never grew any bigger, for just as fast 
as she could see it growing, it kept falling 
to pieces. When she got close to it, she 
discovered that it was a water-tree — made 
of just such water as she washed with — only 
it was alive of course, like the river — a dif- 
ferent sort of water from that, doubtless, 
seeing the one crept swiftly along the floor, 
and the other shot straight up, and fell, and 
swallowed itself, and rose again. She put 
her feet into the marble basin, which was 
the flower-pot in which it grew. It was 
full of real water, living and cool — so nice, 
for the night was hot ! 

But the flowers ! ah, the flowers ! she 
was friends with them from the very first. 
What wonderful creatures they were ! — and 
so kind and beautiful — always sending out 
such colours and such scents — red scent, and 
white scent, and yellow scent — for the other 
creatures ! The one that was invisible and 
everywhere, took such a quantity of their 
scents, and carried it away ! yet they did 
not seem to mind. It was their talk, to 
show they were alive, and not painted like 
those on the walls of her rooms, and on the 
carpets. 

She wandered along down the garden 
until she reached the river. Unable then 


SOMETHING QUITE NEW. 


113 


to get any further — for she was a little 
afraid, and justly, of the swift watery ser- 
pent — she dropped on the grassy bank, 
dipped her feet in the water, and felt it 
running and pushing against them. For a 
long time she sat thus, and her bliss seemed 
complete, as she gazed at the river, and 
watched the broken picture of the great lamp 
overhead, moving up one side of the root^ 
to go down the other. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

SOMETHING QUITE NEW. 

A BEAUTIFUL moth brushed across the great 
blue eyes of Nycteris. She sprang to her 
feet to follow it — not in the spirit of the 
hunter, but of the lover. Her heart — like 
every heart, if only its fallen sides were 
cleared away — was an inexhaustible fountain 
of love : she loved everything she saw. But 
as she followed the moth, she caught sight of 
something lying on the bank of the river, 
and not yet having learned to be afraid of 
anything, ran straight to see what it was. 
Reaching it, she stood amazed. Another 
girl like herself ! But what a strange- 
looking girl ! — so curiously dressed too ! — 
and not able to move ! Was she dead ? 
Filled suddenly with pity, she sat down, lifted 


114 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

Photogen’s liead, laid it on her lap, and 
began stroking his face. Her warm hands 
brought him to himself. He opened his black 
eyes, out of which had gone all the fire, and 
looked up with a strange sound of fear, half 
moan, half gasp. But when he saw her face, 
he drew a deep breath, and lay motionless — 
gazing at her : those blue marvels above him, 
like a better sky, seemed to side with courage 
and assuage his terror. At length, in a 
trembling, awed voice, and a half whisper, 
he said, “ Who are you ? ” 

“ I am Nycteris,” she answered. 

‘‘You are a creature of the darkness, and 
love the night,” he said, his fear beginning 
to move again. 

“ I may be a creature of the darkness,” she 
replied. “ I hardly know what you mean. 
But I do not love the night. I love the day 
— with all my heart ; and I sleep all the 
night long.” 

“ How can that be ? ” said Photogen, 
rising on his elbow, but dropping his head 
on her lap again the moment he saw the 
moon ; “ — how can it be,” he repeated, 
“ when I see your eyes there — wide awake ? ” 

She only smiled and stroked him, for she 
did not understand him, and thought he did 
not know what he was saying. 

“ Was it a dream then ? ” resumed Pho- 
togen, rubbing his eyes. But with that his 
memory came clear, and he shuddered, and 
cried, “ Oh horrible ! horrible ! to be turned 


SOMETHING QUITE NEW. 115 

all at once into a coward ! a shameful, con- 
temptible, disgraceful coward ! I am ashamed 
— ashamed — and so frightened ! It is all so 
frightful ! ” 

“ What is so frightful ? ” asked Nycteris, 
with a smile like that of a mother to her child 
waked from a bad dream. 

“ All, all,” he answered ; “ all this darkness 
and the roaring.” 

“ My dear,” said Nycteris, “ there is no 
roaring. How sensitive you must be ! What 
you hear is only the walking of the water, 
and the running about of the sweetest of all 
the creatures. She is invisible, and I call 
her Everywhere, for she goes through all 
the other creatures and comforts them. Now 
she is amusing herself, and them too, with 
shaking them and kissing them, and blowing 
in their faces. Listen : do you call that roar- 
ing ? You should hear her when she is 
rather angry though ! I don’t know why, 
but she is sometimes, and then she does roar 
a little.” 

“It is so horribly dark!” said Photogen, 
who, listening while she spoke, had satisfied 
himself that there was no roaring. 

“ Dark ! ” she echoed. “ You should be in 
my room when an earthquake has killed my 
lamp. I do not understand. How can you 
call this dark ? Let me see : yes, you have 
eyes, and big ones, bigger than Madam 
Watho’s or Falca’s— not so big as mine, I 
fancy — only I never saw mine. But then — 


116 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

oh yes ! — I know now what is the matter ! 
You can’t see with them because they are so 
black. Darkness can’t see, of course. Never 
mind : I will be your eyes, and teach you 
to see. Look here — at these lovely white 
things in the grass, with red sharp points 
all folded together into one. Oh, I love them 
so ! I could sit looking at them all day, the 
darlings ! ” 

Photogen looked close at the flowers, and 
thought he had seen something like them 
before, but could not make them out. As 
Nycteris had never seen an open daisy, so 
had he never seen a closed one. 

Thus instinctively Nycteris tried to turn 
him away from his fear ; and the beautiful 
creature’s strange lovely talk helped not a 
little to make him forget it. 

“ You call it dark ! ” she said again, as if 
she could not get rid of the absurdity of the 
idea ; “ why, I could count every blade of the 
green hair — I suppose it is what the books 
call grass — within two yards of me ! And 
just look at the great lamp! It is brighter 
than usual to-day, and I can’t think why you 
should be frightened, or call it dark ! ” 

As she spoke, she went on stroking his 
cheeks and hair, and trying to comfort him. 
But oh how miserable he was ! and how 
plainly he looked it ! He was on the point 
of saying tliat her great lamp was dreadful 
to him, looking like a witch, walking in the 
sleep of death ; but he was not so ignorant 


SOMETHING QUITE NEW. 117 

as Nycteris, and knew even in the moonlight 
that she was a woman, though he had never 
seen one so young or so lovely before ; and 
while she comforted his fear, her presence 
made him the more ashamed of it. Besides, 
not knowing her nature, he might annoy her, 
and make her leave him to his misery. He 
lay still therefore, hardly daring to move : 
all the little life he had seemed to come from 
her, and if he were to move, she might move ; 
and if she were to leave him, he must weep 
like a child. 

“How did you, come here?” asked Nyc- 
teris, taking his face between her hands. 

“ Down the hill,” he answered. 

“ Where do you sleep ? ” she asked. 

He signed in the direction of the house. 
She gave a little laugh of delight. 

“ When you have learned not to he fright- 
ened, you will always be wanting to come 
out with me,” she said. 

She thought with herself she would ask 
her presently, when she had come to herself 
a little, how she had made her escape, for 
she must, of course, like herself have got out 
of a cave, in which Watho and Falca had 
been keeping her. 

“ Look at the lovely colours,” she went on, 
pointing to a rose-bush, on which Photogen 
could not see a single flower. “ They are far 
more beautiful — are they not ? — than any of 
the colours upon your walls. And then they 
are alive, and smell so sweet ! ” 


118 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

He wished she would not make him keep 
opening his eyes to look at things he could 
not see ; and every other moment would start 
and grasp tight hold of her, as some fresh 
pang of terror shot into him. 

“ Come, come, dear ! ” said Nycteris ; “ you 
must not go on this way. You must be a 
brave girl, and ” 

“ A girl ! ” shouted Photogen, and started 
to his feet in wrath. ‘‘ If you were a man, 
I should kill you.” 

“A man?” repeated Nycteris: “what is 
that? How could I be that? We are both 
girls — are we not ? ” 

“ No, I arn not a girl,” he answered ; 
“ — although,” he added, changing his tone, 
and casting himself on the ground at her 
feet, “ I have given you too good reason to 
call me one.” 

“ Oh, I see ! ” returned Nycteris. “ No, of 
course ! you can’t be a girl : girls are not 
afraid — without reason. I understand now : 
it is because you are not a girl that you are 
so frightened.” 

Photogen twisted and writhed upon the 
grass. 

“ No, it is not,” he said sulkily ; “ it is 
this horrible darkness that creeps into me, 
goes all through me, into the very marrow 
of my bones — that is what makes me behave 
like a girl. If only the sun would rise ! ” 

“ The sun ! what is it ? ” cried Nycteris, 
now in her turn conceiving a vague fear. 


SOMETHING QUITE NEW. 119 

Then Photogen broke into a rhapsody, in 
which he vainly sought to forget his. 

“ It is the soul, the life, the heart, the 
glory of the universe,” he said. “ The worlds 
dance like motes in his beams. The heart 
of man is strong and brave in his light, and 
when it departs his courage grows from him 
— goes with the sun, and he becomes such as 
you see me now.” 

‘‘ Then that is not the sun ? ” said Nycteris, 
thoughtfully, pointing up to the moon. 

“ That ! ” cried Photogen, with utter scorn ; 
“ I know nothing about except that it 
is ugly and horrible. At best it can be only 
the ghost of a dead sun. Yes, that is it ! 
That is what makes it look so frightful.” 

“ No,” said Nycteris, after a long, thought- 
ful pause ; “ you must be wrong there. I 
think the sun is the ghost of a dead moon, 
and that is how he is so much more splendid 
as you say.— Is there, then, another big room, 
where the sun lives in the roof?” 

“ I do not know what you mean,” replied 
Photogen. ‘‘ But you mean to be kind, I 
know, though you should not call a poor 
fellow in the dark a girl. If you will let 
me lie here, with my head in your lap, I 
should like to sleep. Will you watch me, 
and take care of me ? ” 

“ Yes, that I will,” answered Nycteris, for- 
getting all her own danger. 

So Photogen fell asleep. 


120 HISTORY OP PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SUN. 

There Nycteris sat, and there the youth lay, 
all night long, in the heart of the great cone- 
shadow of the earth, like two Pharaohs in 
one pyramid. Photogen slept, and slept ; 
and Nycteris sat motionless lest she should 
wake him, and so betray him to his fear. 

The moon rode high in the blue eternity ; 
it was a very triumph of glorious night ; the 
river ran babble-murmuring in deep soft 
syllables ; the fountain kept rushing moon- 
ward, and blossoming momently to a great 
silvery flower, whose petals were for ever 
falling like snow, but with a continuous 
musical clash, into the bed of its exhaustion 
beneath ; the wind woke, took a run among 
the trees, went to sleep, and woke again ; the 
daisies slept on their feet at hers, but she did 
not know they slept ; the roses might well 
seem awake, for their scent filled the air, but 
in truth they slept also, and the odour was 
that of their dreams ; the oranges hung like 
gold lamps in the trees, and their silvery 
flowers were the souls of their yet unem- 
bodied cliildren ; the scent of the acacia 
blooms filled the air like the very odour of 
the moon herself. 

At last, unused to the livmg air, and weary 


THE SUN. 


121 


with sitting so still and so long, Nycteris 
grew drowsy. The air began to grow cool. 

It was getting near the time when she too 
was accustomed to sleep. She closed her 
eyes just a moment, and nodded — opened 
them suddenly wide, for she had promised 
to watch. 

In that moment a change had come. The 
moon had got round, and was fronting her 
from the west, and she saw that her face 
was altered, that she had grown pale, as if 
she too were wan with fear, and from her 
lofty place espied a coming terror. The 
light seemed to be dissolving out of her; she 
was dying — she was going out ! And yet 
everything around looked strangely clear — 
clearer than ever she had seen anything 
before : how could the lamp be shedding 
more light when she herself had less ? Ah, 
that was just it ! See how faint she looked ! 

It was because the light was forsaking her, 
and spreading itself over the room, that she 
grew so thin and pale ! She was giving up 
everything ! She was melting away from 
the roof like a bit of sugar in water. 

Nycteris was fast growing afraid, and 
sought refuge with the face upon her lap. 
How beautiful the creature was! — what to 
call it she could not think, for it had been 
angry when she called it what Watho called 
her. And, wonder upon wonder 1 now, even 
in the cold change that was passing upon 
the great room, the colour as of a red rose ♦ 


122 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

was rising in the wan cheek. What beautiful 
yellow hair it was that spread over her lap ! 
What great huge breaths the creature took ! 
And what were those curious things it 
carried ? She had seen them on her walls, 
she was sure. 

Thus she talked to herself while the lamp 
grew paler and paler, and everything kept 
growing yet clearer. What could it mean ? 
The lamp was dying — going out into the 
other place of which the creature in her lap 
had spoken, to be a sun ! But why were 
the things growing clearer before it was 
yet a sun ? That was the point. Was it her 
growing into a sun that did it? Yes ! yes ! 
it was coming death ! She knew it, for it 
was coming upon her also ! She felt it 
coming ! What was she about to grow into ? 
Something beautiful, like the creature in her 
lap ? It might be ! Anyhow, it must be 
death ; for all her strength was going out 
of her, wliile all around her was growing 
so light she could not bear it! She must 
be blind soon! Would she be blind or dead 
first ? 

For the sun was rushing up behind her. 
Photogen woke, lifted his head from her lap, 
and sprang to his feet. His face was one 
radiant smile. His heart was full of daring 
— that of the hunter who will creep into the 
tiger’s den. Nycteris gave a cry, covered 
her face with her hands, and pressed her 
eyelids close. Then blindly she stretched 


THE SUN. 


123 


out her arms to Photogen, crying, ‘‘Oh, I 
am so frightened ! What is this ? It must 
be death ! I don’t wish to die yet. I love 
this room and the old lamp. I do not want 
the other place ! This is terrible. I want 
to hide. I want to get into the sweet, soft, 
dark hands of all the other creatures. Ah 
me ! ah me ! ” 

“ What is the matter with you, girl ? ” 
said Photogen, with the arrogance of all 
male creatures until they have been taught 
by the other kind. He stood looking down 
upon her over his bow, of which he was 
examining the string. “There is no fear 
of anything now, child. It is day. The 
sun is all but up. Look ! he will be above 
the brow of yon hill in one moment more ! 
Good-bye. Thank you for my night’s lodging. 
I’m off. Don’t be a goose. If ever I can do 
anything for you — and all that, you know ! ” 

“ Don’t leave me ; oh, don’t leave me ! ” 
cried Nycteris. “ I am dying ! I am dying ! 
I cannot move. The light sucks all the 
strength out of me. And oh, I am so 
frightened ! ” 

But already Photogen had splashed 
through the river, bolding high his bow 
that it might not get wet. He rushed across 
the level, and strain; ‘d up the opposing hill. 
Hearing no answer, Nycteris removed her 
hands. Photogen had reached the top, and 
the same moment the sun rays alighted upon 
him : the glory of the king of day crowded 


124 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

blazing upon the golden-haired youth. 
Eadiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty 
strength, a flashing shape in the midst of 
flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a 
gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a 
keen musical twang of the bowstring, and 
Photogen darting after it, vanished with a 
shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from 
his quiver scattered astonishment and exulta- 
tion. But the brain of poor Nycteris was 
pierced through and through. She fell down 
in utter darkness. All around her was a 
flaming furnace. In despair and feebleness 
and agony, she crept back, feeling her way 
with doubt and difficulty and enforced per- 
sistence to her cell. When at last the 
friendly darkness of her chamber folded her 
about with its cooling and consoling arms, 
she threw herself on her bed and fell fast 
asleep. And there she slept on, one alive 
in a tomb, while Photogen, above in the 
sun-glory, pursued the buffaloes on the lofty 
plain, thinking not once of her where she 
lay dark and forsaken, whose presence had 
been his refuge, her eyes and her hands his 
guardians through the night. He was in 
his glory and his pride ; and the darkness 
and its disgrace had vanished for a time. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE COWARD HERO. 


But no sooner had the sun reached the 
noonstead, than Photogen began to remember 
tlie past night in the shadow of that which 
was at hand, and to remember it with shame. 
He had proved himself — and not to himself 
only, but to a girl as well — a coward ! — one 
bold in the daylight, while there was nothing 
to fear, but trembling like any slave when 
the night arrived. There was, there must 
be, sometliing unfair in it! A spell had 
been cast upon him ! He had eaten, he had 
drunk something that did not agree with 
courage ! In any case he had been taken 
unprepared ! How was he to know what 
the going down of the sun would be like ? 
It was no wonder he should have been 
surprised into terror, seeing it was what it 
was — in its very nature so terrible ! Also, 
one could not see where danger might be 
coming from ! You might be torn in pieces, 
carried off, or swallowed up, without even 
seeing where to strike a blow ! Every pos- 
sible excuse he caught at, eager as a self- 
lover to lighten his self-contem[)t. That day 
he astonished the huntsmen — terrified them 
with his reckless daring — all to prove to 
himself he was no coward. But nothing 


126 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

eased his shame. One thing only had hope 
in it — the resolve to encounter the dark in 
solemn earnest, now that he knew something 
of what it was. It was nobler to meet a 
recognized danger than to rush contemptu- 
ously into what seemed nothing — nobler still 
to encounter a nameless horror. He could 
conquer fear and wipe out disgrace together. 
For a marksman and swordsman like him, 
he said, one with his strength and courage, 
there was but danger. Defeat there was not. 
He knew the darkness now, and when it 
came he would meet it as fearless and cool 
as now he felt himself. And again he said, 
“We shall see ! ” 

He stood under the boughs of a great 
beech as the sun was going down, far away 
over the jagged hills : before it was half 
down, he was trembling like one of the 
leaves behind him in the first sigh of 
the night-wind. The moment the last of the 
glowing disc vanished, he bounded away in 
terror to gain the valley, and his fear grew 
as he ran. Down the side of the hill, an 
abject creature, he went bounding and roll- 
ing and running ; fell rather than plunged 
into the river, and came to himself, as 
before, lying on the grassy bank in the 
garden. 

But when he opened his eyes, there were 
no girl-eyes looking down into his ; there 
were only the stars in the waste of the 
sunless Night — the awful all-enemy he had 


THE COWARD HERO. 


127 


again dared, but could not encounter. Per- 
haps the girl was not yet come out of the 
water ! He would try to sleep, for he dared 
not move, and perhaps when he woke he 
would find his head on her lap, and the 
beautiful dark face, with its deep blue eyes, 
bending over liim. But when he woke he 
found his head on the grass, and although 
he sprang up with all his courage, such as it 
was, restored, he did not set out for the 
chase with such an elan as the day before; 
and, despite the sun-glory in his heart and 
veins, his hunting was this day less eager ; 
he ate little, and from the first was thoughtful 
even to sadness. A second time he was 
defeated and disgraced ! Was his courage 
nothing more than the play of the sunlight 
on his brain ? Was he a mere hall tossed 
between the light and the dark ? Then 
what a poor contemptible creature he was ! 
But a third chance lay before him. If he 
failed the third time, he dared not foreshadow 
what he must then think of himself ! It was 
bad enough now — but then ! 

Alas ! it went no better. The moment the 
sun was down, he fled as if from a legion 
of devils. 

Seven times in all, he tried to face the 
coming night in the strength of the past 
day, and seven times he failed — failed with 
such increase of failure, with such a growing 
sense of ignominy, overwhelming at length 
ail the sunny hours and joining night to 


128 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

l ight, that, what with misery, self-accusa- 
tion, and loss of confidence, his daylight 
courage too began to fade, and at length, 
from exhaustion, from getting wet, and then 
lying out of doors all night, and night after 
night, — worst of all, from the consuming of 
the deathly fear, and the shame of shame, 
his sleep forsook him, and on the seventh 
morning, instead of going to the hunt, he 
crawled into the castle, and went to bed. 
The grand health, over which the witch had 
taken such pains, had yielded, and in an 
hour or two he was moaning and crying out 
in delirium. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

AN EVIL NURSE. 

Watho was herself ill, as I have said, and 
was the worse tempered ; and, besides, it is 
a peculiarity of witches, that what works in 
others to sympathy, works in them to re- 
pulsion. Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, 
rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just 
enough to make her uncomfortable, and 
therefore more wicked. So, when she heard 
that Photogen was ill, she was angry. Ill, 
indeed ! after all she had done to saturate 
him with the life of the system, with the 
solar might itself ! He was a wretched 
failure, the boy ! And because he was her 


AN EVIL NURSE. 


129 


failure, she was annoyed with him, began 
to dislike him, grew to hate him. She 
looked on him as a painter might upon a 
picture, or a poet upon a poem, which he 
had only succeeded in getting into an irre- 
coverable mess. In the hearts of witches, 
love and hate lie close together, and often 
tumble over each other. And whether it 
was that her failure with Photogen foiled 
also her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that 
her illness made her yet more of a devil’s 
wife, certainly Watho now got sick of the 
girl too, and hated to know her about the 
castle. 

She was not too ill, however, to go to 
poor Photogen’s room and torment him. 
She told him she hated him like a serpent, 
and hissed like one as she said it, looking 
very sharp in the nose and chin, and flat in 
the forehead. Photogen thought she meant 
to kill him, and hardly ventured to take 
anything brought him. She ordered every 
ray of light to be shut out of his room ; 
but by means of this he got a little used to 
the darkness. She would take one of his 
arrows, and now tickle him with the feather 
end of it, now prick him with the point till 
the blood ran down. What she meant finally 
I cannot tell, but she brought Photogen 
speedily to the determination of making his 
escape from the castle : what he should do 
then he would think afterwards. Who could 
tell but he might find his mother somewhere 

K 


130 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NTCTERI5. 

beyond the forest! If it were not for the 
broad patches of darkness that divided day 
from day, he would fear nothing ! 

But now, as he lay helpless in the dark, 
ever and anon would come dawning through 
it the face of the lovely creature who on 
that first awful night nursed him so sweetly : 
was he never to see her again ? If she was, 
as he had concluded, the nymph of the river, 
why had she not re-appeared ? She might 
have taught him not to fear the night, for 
plainly she had no fear of it herself! But 
then, when the day came, she did seem 
frightened : — why was that, seeing there was 
nothing to be afraid of then ? Perhaps one 
so much at home in the darkness, was corre- 
spondingly afraid of the light! Then his 
selfish joy at the rising of the sun, blinding 
him to her condition, had made him behave 
to her, in ill return for her kindness, as 
cruelly as Watho behaved to him! How 
sweet and dear and lovely she was ! If there 
were wild beasts that came out only at night, 
and were afraid of the light, why should 
there not be girls too, made the same way — 
who could not endure the light, as he could 
not bear the darkness ? If only he could 
find her again ! Ah, how differently he 
would behave to her ! But alas ! perhaps 
the sun had killed her — melted hei — burned 
her up ! — dried her up— that was it, if she 
was the nymph of the river ! 


CHAPTER XYII- 

WATHO’S WOLF 

From that dreadfu) morning Nycteris had 
never got to be herself again. The sudden 
light had been almost death to her ; and now 
she lay in the dark with the memory of a 
terrific sharpness — a something she dared 
scarcely recall, lest the very thought of it 
should sting her beyond endurance. But 
this was as nothing to the pain which the 
recollection of the rudeness of the shining 
creature whom she had nursed through his 
fear caused her; for, the moment his suffering 
passed over to her, and he was free, the first 
use he made of his returning strength had 
been to scorn her ! She wondered and won- 
dered ; it was all beyond her comprehension. 

Before long, Watho was plotting evil 
against her. The witch was like a sick child 
weary of his toy : she would pull her to 
pieces, and see how she liked it. She would 
set her in the sun, and see her die, like a 
jelly Irom the salt ocean cast out on a hot 
rock. It would be a sight to soothe her 
wolf-pain. One day, therefore, a little before 
noon, while Nycteris was in her deepest 
sleep, she had a darkened litter brought to 
the door, and in that she made two of her 
men carry her to the plain above. There 


132 HISTORY OF PIIOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 


they took her out, laid her on the grass, and 
left her. 

Watho watched it all from the top of her 
high tower, througli her telescope ; and 
scarcely was Nycteris left, when she saw her 
sit up, and the same moment cast herself 
down again with her face to the ground. 

“ She’ll have a sunstroke,” said Watho, 
“and that’ll be the end of her.” 

Presently, tormented by a fly, a huge- 
humped bufl’alo, with great shaggy mane, 
came galloping along, straight for where she 
lay. At sight of the thing on the grass, he 
started, swerved yards aside, stopped dead, 
and then came slowly up, looking malicious. 
Nycteris lay quite still, and never even saw 
the animal. 

“ Now she’ll be trodden to death ! ” said 
Watho. “ That’s the way those creatures 
do.” 


When the buffalo reached her, he sniffed 
at her all over, and went away ; then came 
back, and sniffed again ; then all at once 
went off as if a demon had him by the 
tail. 

Next came a gnu, a more dangerous animal 
still, and did much the same ; then a gaunt 
wild boar. But no creature hurt her, and 
Watho was angry with the whole creation. 

At length, in the shade of her hair, the 
blue eyes of Nycteris began to come to them- 
selves a little, and the first thing they saw 
was a comfort. I have told already how she 


WATHO’S WOLF. 


133 


knew the night-daisies, each a sharp-pointed 
little cone with a red tip ; and once she had 
parted the rays of one of them, with trem- 
bling fingers, for she was afraid she was 
dreadfully rude, and perhaps was hurting it ; 
but she did want, she said to herself, to see 
what secret it carried so carefully hidden ; 
and she found its golden heart. But now, 
right under her eyes, inside the veil of her 
hair, in the sweet twilie^ht of whose blackness 
she could see it perfectly, stood a daisy with 
its red tip opened wide into a carmine ring, 
displaying its heart of gold on a platter of 
silver. She did not at first recognize it as 
one of those cones come awake, but a 
moment’s notice revealed what it was. Who 
then could have been so cruel to the lovely 
little creature, as to force it open like that, 
and spread it heart-bare to the terrible death- 
lamp ? Whoever it was, it must be the same 
that had thrown her out there to be burned 
to death in its fire ! But she had her hair, 
and could hang her head, and make a small 
sweet night of her own about her ! She tried 
to bend the daisy down and away from the 
sun, and to make its petals hang about it like 
her hair, but she could not. Alas ! it was 
burned and dead already! She did not know 
that it could not yield to her gentle force 
because it was drinking life, with all the 
eagerness of life, from what she called the 
death-lamp. Oh, how the lamp burned her 1 
But she went on thinking — she did not 


134 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

know how ; and by and by began to reflect 
that, as there was no roof to the room except 
that in which the great fire went rolling 
about, the little Red-tip must have seen the 
lamp a thousand times, and must know it 
quite well ! and it had not killed it ! Nay, 
thinking about farther, she began to ask the 
question whether this, in which she now saw 
it, might not be its more perfect condition. 
For not only now did the whole seem perfect, 
as indeed it did before, but every part showed 
its own individual perfection as well, which 
perfection made it capable of combining wn’th 
the rest into the higher perfection of a whole. 
The flower was a lamp itself! The golden 
heart was the light, and the silver border was 
the alabaster globe, skilfully broken, and 
spread wide to let out the glory. Yes ; the 
radiant shape was plainly its perfection 1 If, 
then, it was the lamp which had opened it 
into that shape, the lamp could not be un- 
friendly to it, but must be of its own kind, 
seeing it made it perfect 1 And again, when 
she thought of it, there was clearly no little 
resemblance between them. What if the 
flower then was the little great-grandchild 
of the lamp, and he was loving it all the 
time? And what if the lamp did not mean 
to hurt her, only could not help it ? The red 
tips looked as if the flower had some time or 
other been hurt : what if the lamp was making 
the best it could of her — opening her out 
somehow like the flower ? She would bear it 


REFUGE. 


135 


patiently, and see. But how coarse the colour 
of the grass was ! Perhaps, however, her 
eyes not being made for the bright lamp, she 
did not see them as they were ! Then she 
remembered how different were the eyes of 
the creature that was not a girl and was 
afraid of the darkness ! Ah, if the darkness 
would only come again, all arms, friendly 
and soft everywhere about her ! She would 
wait and wait, and bear, and be patient. 

She lay so still that Watho did not doubt 
she had fainted. She was pretty sure she 
would be dead before the night came to re- 
vive her. 


CHAPTER XYIII. 

REFUGE. 

Fixing her telescope on the motionless form, 
that she might see it at once when the morn- 
ing came, Watho went down from the tower 
to Photogen’s room. He was much better by 
this time, and before she left him, he had 
resolved to leave the castle that very night. 
The darkness was terrible indeed, but Watho 
was worse than even the darkness, and he 
could not escape in the day. As soon, there- 
fore, as the house seemed still, he tightened 
his belt, hung to it his hunting-knife, put a 
flask of wine and some bread in his pocket, 
and took his bow and arrows. He got from 


136 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

the house, and made his way at once up to 
the plain. But what with his illness, the 
terrors of the night, and his drend of the 
wild beasts, when he got to the level he could 
not walk a step further, and sat down, think- 
ing it better to die than to live. In spite of 
his fears, however, sleep contrived to over- 
come him, and he fell at full length on the 
soft grass. 

He had not slept long when he woke with 
such a strange sense of comfort and security, 
that he thought the dawn at least must have 
arrived. But it was dark night about him. 
And the sky — no, it was not the sky, but the 
blue eyes of his naiad looking down upon 
him ! Once more he lay with his head in 
her lap, and all was well, for plainly the girl 
feared the darkness as little as he the day. 

“Thank you,” he said. “ You are like live 
armour to my heart ; you keep the fear off 
me. I have been very ill since then. Did 
you come up out of the river when you saw 
me cross ? ” 

“ I don’t live in the water,” she answered. 
“ I live under the pale lamp, and I die under 
the bright one.” 

“Ah, yes! I understand now,” he returned. 
“ I would not have behaved as I did last 
time if I had understood ; but I thought you 
were mocking me ; and I am so made that I 
cannot help being frightened at the darkness. 
I beg your pardon lor leaving you as I did, 
for, as I say, I did not understand. Now I 


REFUGE. 137 

believe you were really frightened. Were 
you not ? ” 

“ I was, indeed,” answered Nycteris, “ and 
shall be again. But why you should be, I 
cannot in the least understand. You must 
know how gentle and sweet the darkness is, 
how kind and friendly, how soft and velvety ! 
It holds you to its bosom and loves you. A 
little while ago, I lay faint and dying under 
your hot lamp. — What is it you call it ? ” 

“ The sun,” murmured Photogen : “ how I 
wiish he would make haste ! ” 

‘‘ Ah ! do not wish that. Do not, for my 
sake, hurry him. I can take care of you from 
the darkness, but I have no one to take care 
of me from the light. — As I was telling you, 
I lay dying in the sun. All at once I drew 
a deep breath. A cool wind came and ran 
over my face. I looked up. The torture 
was gone, for the death-lamp itself was gone. 
I hope he does not die and grow brighter 
yet. My terrible headache was all gone, and 
my sight was come back. I felt as if I were 
new made. But I did not get up at once, 
for I was tired still. The grass grew cool 
about me, and turned soft in colour. Some- 
thing wet came upon it, and it was now 
so pleasant to my feet, that I rose and ran 
about. And when I had been running about 
a long time, all at once I found you lying, just 
as I had been lying a little while before. So 
I sat down beside you to take care of you, till 
your life — and my death — should come again.” 


138 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

“How good yon are, you beautiful creature! 

■ — Why, you forgave me before ever I asked 
you ! ” cried Photogen. 

Thus they fell a talking, and he told her 
what he knew of his history, and she told 
him what she knew of hers, and they agreed 
they must get away from Watho as far as 
ever they could. 

“And we must set out at once,” said 
Nycteris. 

“ The moment the morning comes,” re- 
turned Photogen. 

“We must not wait for the morning,” 
said Nycteris, “ for then I shall not be able 
to move, and what would you do the next 
night? Besides, Watho sees best in the 
daytime. Indeed, you must come now. Pho- 
togen. — You must.” 

“ I can not ; I dare not,” said Photogen. 
“ I cannot move. If I but lift my head from 
your lap, the very sickness of terror seizes 
me.” 

“I shall he with you,” said Nycteris 
soothingly. “ I will take care of you till your 
dreadful sun comes, and then you may leave 
me, and go away as fast as you can. Only 
please put me in a dark place first, if there 
is one to he found.” 

“ I will never leave you again, Nycteris,” 
cried Photogen. “ Only wait till the sun 
comes, and brings me back my strength, and 
we will go away together, and never, never 
part any more.” 


REFUGE. 


139 


‘‘ No, no,” persisted Nvcteris ; “ we must 
go now. And you must learn to be strong 
in the dark as well as in the day, else you 
will always be only half brave. I have begun 
already — not to fight your sun, but to try to 
get at peace with him, and understand what 
he really is, and what he means with me — 
whether to hurt me or to make the best of me. 
You must do the same with my darkness.” 

‘‘ But you don’t know what mad animals 
there are away there towards the south,” 
said Photogen. “ They have huge green 
eyes, and they would eat you up like a bit 
of celery, you beautiful creature ! ” 

“ Come, come ! you must,” said Nycteris, 
or I shall have to pretend to leave you, to 
make you come. I have seen the green eyes 
you speak of, and I will take care of you 
from them.” 

“You! How can you do that? If it 
were day now, I could take care of you from 
the worst of them. But as it is, I can’t even 
see them for this abominable darkness. I 
could not see your lovely eyes but for the 
light that is in them ; that lets me see 
straight into heaven through them. They 
are windows into the very heaven beyond 
the sky. I believe they are the very place 
where the stars are made.” 

‘‘You come then, or I shall shut them,” 
said Nycteris, “ and you shan’t see them any 
more till you are good. Come. If you can’t 
isee the wild beasts, I can.” 


140 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NTCTERIS. 


“ You can ! and you ask me to come ! ’* 
cried Photogen. 

“Yes,” answered Nycteris. “And more 
than that, I see them long before they can 
see me, so that I am able to take care of 
you.” 

“ But how ? ” persisted Photogen. “ You 
can’t shoot with bow and arrow, or stab with 
a hunting-knife.” 

“ No, but I can keep out of the way of 
them all. Why, just when I found you, I 
was having a game with two or three of 
them at once. I see, and scent them too, 
long before they are near me — long before 
they can see or scent me.” 

“ You don’t see or scent any now, do 
you ? ” said Photogen, uneasily, rising on 
his elbow.” 

“ No — none at present. I will look,” 
replied Nycteris, and sprang to her feet. 

“ Oh, oh ! do not leave me — not for a 
moment,” cried Photogen, straining his eyes 
to keep her face in sight through the dark- 
ness. 

“Be quiet, or they will hear you,” she 
returned. “ The wind is from the south, 
and they cannot scent us. I have found out 
all about that. Ever since the dear dark 
came, I have been amusing myself with them, 
getting every now and then just into the 
edge of the wind, and letting one have a sniff 
of me.” 

“ Oh, horrible ! ” cried Photogen. “ I 


REFUGE. 


141 


hope you will not insist on doinp^ so any 
more. What was the consequence ? ” 

“ Always, the very instant, he turned with 
flashing eyes, and bounded towards me — 
only he could not see me, you must remember. 
But my eyes being so much better than his, 
I could see him perfectly well, and would 
run away round him until I scented him, 
and then I knew he could not find me any- 
how. If the wind were to turn, and run 
the other way now, there might be a whole 
army of them down upon us, leaving no 
room to keep out of their way. You had 
better come.” 

She took him by the hand. He yielded 
and rose, and she led him away. But his 
steps were feeble, and as the night went on, 
he seemed more and more ready to sink. 

“ Oh dear ! I am so tired ! and so 
frightened ! ” he would say. 

“Lean on me,” Nycteris would return, 
putting her arm round him, or patting his 
cheek. “ Take a few steps more. Every 
step away from the castle is clear gain. 
Lean harder on me. I am quite strong and 
well now.” 

So they went on. The piercing night- 
eyes of Nycteris descried not a few pairs 
of green ones gleaming like holes in the 
darkness, and many a round she made to 
keep far out of their way ; but she never 
said to Photogen she saw them. Carefully 
she kept him off the uneven places, and on 


142 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

the softest and smoothest of the grass, talking 
to him gently all the way as they went — 
of the lovely flowers and the stars — how 
comfortable the flowers looked, down in 
their green beds, and how happy the stars 
up in their blue beds ! 

When the morning began to come, he 
began to grow better, but was dreadfully 
tired with walking instead of sleeping, espe- 
cially after being so long ill. Nycteris too, 
what with supporting him, what with grow- 
ing fear of the light which was beginning 
to ooze out of the east, was very tired. At 
length, both equally exhausted, neither was 
able to help the other. As if by consent 
they stopped. Embracing each the other, 
they stood in the midst of the wide grassy 
land, neither of them able to move a step, 
each supported only by the leaning weakness 
of the other, each ready to fall if the other 
should move. But while the one grew 
weaker still, the other had begun to grow 
stronger. When the tide of the night began 
to ebb, the tide of the day began to flow ; 
and now the sun was rushing to the horizon, 
borne upon its foaming billows. And ever 
as he came. Photogen revived. At last the 
sun shot up into the air, like a bird from the 
hand of the Father of Lights. Nycteris gave 
a cry of pain, and hid her face in her hands. 

“ Oh me ! ” she sighed ; “ I am so 

frightened ! The terrible light stings so ! ” 

But the same instant, through her blind- 


THE WEREWOLF. 


143 


ness, she heard Photogen give a low exultant 
laugh, and the next felt herself caught up : 
she who all night long had tended and pro- 
tected him like a child, was now in his arms, 
borne along like a baby, with her head lying 
on his shoulder. But she was the greater, 
for, suffering more, she feared nothing. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WEREWOLF. 

At the very moment when Photogen caught 
up Nycteris, the telescope of Watho was 
angrily sweeping the table-land. She swung 
it from her in rage, and running to her room, 
shut herself up. There she anointed herself 
from top to toe with a certain ointment ; 
shook down her long red hair, and tied it 
round her waist ; then began to dance, 
whirling round and round faster and faster, 
growing angrier and angrier, until she was 
foaming at the mouth with fury. When 
Falca went looking for her, she could not 
lind her anywhere. 

As the sun rose, the wind slowly changed 
and went round, until it blew straight from 
the north. Photogen and Nycteris were 
drawing near the edge of the forest, Photogen 
still carrying Nycteris, when she moved a 
little on his shoulder uneasily, and murmured 
in his ear. 


144 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

‘‘ I smell a wild beast — that way, the way 
the wind is coming.” 

Photogen turned, looked back towards the 
castle, and saw a dark speck on the plain. 
As he looked, it grew larger : it was coming 
across the grass with the spee 1 of the wind. 
It came nearer and nearer. It looked long 
and low, but that might be because it was 
running at a great stretch. He set Nycteris 
down under a tree, in the black shadow ol 
its bole, strung his bow, and picked out his 
heaviest, longest, sharpest arrow. Just as 
he set the notch on the string, he saw that 
the creature was a tremendous wolf, rushing 
straight at him. He loosened his knife in 
its sheath, drew another arrow half-way from 
the quiver, lest the first should fail, and took 
his aim — at a good distance, to leave time 
for a second chance. He shot. The arrow 
rose, flew straight, descended, struck the 
beast, and started again into the air, doubled 
like a letter Y. Quickly Photogen snatched 
the other, shot, cast his bow from him, and 
drew his knife. But the arrow was in the 
brute’s chest, up to the feather ; it tumbled 
heels over head with a great thud of its back 
on the earth, gave a groan, made a struggle 
or two, and lay stretched out motionless. 

‘‘ I’ve killed it, Nycteris,” cried Photogen. 
“ It is a great red wolf.” 

“ Oh, thank you ! ” answered Nycteris 
feebly from behind the tree. “ I was sure 
you would. I was not a bit afraid.” 


ALL IS WELL. 


145 


Photogen went up to the wolf. It was a 
monster ! But he was vexed that his first 
arrow had behaved so badly, and was the less 
willing to lose the one that had done him 
such good service : witii a long and a 
strong pull, he drew it from the brute’s chest. 
Could he believe his eyes ? There lay — no 
wolf, but Watho, with her hair tied round 
her w^aist ! The foolish witch had made her- 
self invulnerable, as she supposed, but had 
forgotten that, to torment Photogen there- 
with, she had handled one of his arrows. He 
ran back to Nycteris and told her. 

She shuddered and wept, and would not 
look. 


CHAPTER XX. 

ALL IS WELL. 

There was now no occasion to fly a step 
farther. Neither of them feared any one but 
Watho. They left her there, and went back. 
A great cloud came over the sun, and rain 
began to fall heavily, and Nycteris was much 
refreshed, grew able to see a little, and with 
Photogen’s help walked gently over the cool 
wet grass. 

They had not gone far before they met 
Fargu and the other huntsmen. Photogen 
told them he had killed a great red wolf, and 


146 HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS. 

it was Madam Watho. The huntsmen looked 
grave, but gladness shone through. 

“ Then,” said Fargu, “ I will go and bury 
my mistress.” 

But when they reached the place, they 
found she was already buried — in the maws 
of sundry birds and beasts which had made 
their breakfast of her. 

Then Fargu, overtaking them, would, very 
wisely, have Photogen go to the king, and 
tell him the whole story. But Photogen, 
yet wiser than Fargu, would not set out 
until he had married Nycteris ; “ for then,” 
he said, “ the king himself can’t part us ; 
and if ever two people couldn’t do the one 
without the other, those two are Nycteris 
and I. She has got to teacli me to be a 
brave man in the dark, and I have got to 
look after her until she can bear the heat of 
the sun, and he helps her to see, instead of 
blinding her.” 

They were married that very day. And 
the next day they went togethei* to the king, 
and told him the whole story. But whom 
should they find at the court but the father 
and mother of Photogen, both in high favour 
with the king and queen. Aurora nearly 
died for joy, and told them all how Watho 
had lied, and made her believe her child was 
dead. 

No one knew anything of the father or 
mother of Nycteris ; but when Aurora saw 
in the lovely girl her own azure eyes shining 


ALL Ig WELL. 


147 


through night and its clouds, it made her 
think strange things, and wonder how even 
the wicked themselves may be a link to join 
together the good. Through Watho, the 
mothers, who had never seen each other, 
had changed eyes in their children. 

The king gave them the castle and lands 
of Watho, and there they lived and taught 
each other for many yeai's that were not 
long. But hardlj" had one of them passed, 
before Nycteris had come to love the day 
best, because it was the clothing and crown 
of Photogen, and she saw that the day was 
greater than the night, and the sun more 
lordly than the moon ; and Photogen had 
come to love the night best, because it was 
the mother and home of Nycteris. 

“ But who knows,” Nycteris would say 
to Photogen, “ that, when we go out, we 
shall not go into a day as much greater than 
your day as your day is greater than my 


THE BUTCHER'S BILLS. 


CHAPTER 1. 

HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

I AM going to tell a story of married life. 
My title will prepare the reader for some- 
thing hardly heroic ; but I trust it will not 
be found lacking in the one genuine and 
worthy interest a tale ought to have — 
namely, that it presents a door through which 
we may walk into one region or another of 
the human heart, and there' find ourselves 
not altogether unacquainted or from home. 

There was a law among the Jews which 
forbade the yoking together of certain 
animals, either because, being unequal in 
size or strength, one of them must be op- 
pressed, or for the sake of some lesson thus 
embodied to the Eastern mind — possibly for 
both reasons. Half the tragedy would be 
taken out of social life if this law could be 
applied to human beings in their various 
relations. I do not say that this would be 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


149 


well, or that we could afford to lose the result 
of the tragedy thus occasioned. Neither do 
I believe that there are so many instances of 
unequal yoking as the misprising judgments 
of men by men and women by women might 
lead us to imagine. Not every one declared 
by the wisdom of acquaintance to have 
thrown himself or herself away must there- 
fore be set down as unequally yoked. Or it 
may even be that the inequality is there, but 
the loss on the other side. How some people 
could ever have come together must always 
be a puzzle until one knows the history of 
the affair ; but not a few whom most of us 
would judge quite unsuited to each other do 
yet get on pretty well from the first, and 
better and better the longer they are to- 
gether, and that with mutual advantage, 
improvement, and development. Essential 
humanity is deeper than the accidents of 
individuality ; the common is more powerful 
than the peculiar ; and the honest heart will 
always be learning to act more and more in 
accordance with the laws of its being. It 
must be of much more consequence to any 
lady that her husband should be a man on 
whose word she can depend than that he 
should be of a gracious presence. But if 
instead of coming nearer to a true under- 
standing of each other, the two should from 
the first keep falling asunder, then something 
tragic may almost be looked for. 

Duncan and Lucy Dempster were a couple 


150 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


the very mention of whose Christian names 
together would have seemed amusing to the 
friends who had long ceased to talk of their 
unfitness. Indeed, 1 doubt if in their inner- 
most privacy they ever addressed each other 
except as Mr. and Mrs. Dempster. For the 
first time to see them together, no one could 
help wondering how the conjunction could 
have been effected. Dempster was of Scotch 
descent, but the hereditary high cheek-bone 
seemed to have got into his nose, which was 
too heavy a pendant for the low forehead 
from which it hung. About an inch from 
the end it took a swift and unexpected curve 
downwards, and was a curious and abnormal 
nose, which could not properly be assorted 
with any known class of noses. A long 
upper lip, a large, firm, and not quite ugly 
mouth, with a chin both long and square, 
completed a face which, with its low fore- 
head, being yet longer than usual, had a 
particularly equine look. lie was rather 
under the middle height, slender, and well 
enough made — altogether an ordinary mortal, 
known on ’Change as an able, keen, and 
laborious man of business. What his special 
business was I do not know. He went to 
the city by the eight o’clock omnibus every 
morning, dived into a court, entered a little 
square, rushed up two flights of stairs to a 
couple of rooms, and sat down in the back 
one before an office table on a hair-seated 
chair, It 'was a dingy place — not so dirty as 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


151 


it looked, I daresay. Even the windows, 
being of bad glass, did, I believe, look dirtier 
than they were. It was a place where, so 
far as the eye of an outsider could tell, much 
or nothing might be doing. Its occupant 
always wore his hat in it, and his hat always 
looked shabby. Some people said he was 
rich, others that he would be one day. Some 
said he was a responsible man, whatever the 
epithet may have been intended to mean. 1 
believe he was quite as honest as the recog- 
nized laws of his trade demanded — and for 
how many could I say more ? Nobody said 
he was avaricious —but then he moved 
amongst men whose very notion was first 
to make money, after that to be religious, or 
to enjoy themselves, as the case might be. 
And no one either ever said of him that he 
was a good man, or a generous. He was 
about forty years of age, looking somehow 
as if he had never been younger. He had 
had a fair education — better than is generally 
considered necessary for mercantile purposes 
— but it would have been hard to discover 
any signs of it in the spending of his leisure. 
On Sunday mornings he went with his wife 
to church, and when he came home had a 
good dinner, of which now and then a friend 
took his share. If no stranger was present 
he took his wine by himself, and went to 
sleep in his easy chair of marone-coloured 
leather, while his wife sat on the other side 
of the fire if it was winter, or a little way 


152 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


off by the open window if it was summer, 
gently yawned now and then, and looked at 
him with eyes a little troubled. Then he 
went off again by the eight o’clock omnibus 
on Monday morning, and not an idea more or 
less had he in his head, not a hair’s-breadth of 
difference was there in his conduct or pur- 
suits, that he had been to church and had 
spent the day out of business. That may, 
however, for anything I know, have been as 
much the clergyman’s fault as his. He was 
the sort of man you might call machine-made, 
one in whom humanity, if in no wise cari- 
catured, was yet in no wise ennobled. 

His wife was ten years younger than he — 
hardly less than beautiful — only that over her 
countenance seemed to have gathered a kind 
of haze of commonness. At first sight, not- 
withstanding, one could not help perceiving 
that she was china and he was delft. She 
was graceful as she sat, long-necked, slope- 
shouldered, and quite as tall as her husband, 
with a marked daintiness about her in the 
absence of the extremes of the fashion, in the 
quality of the lace she wore on her black silk 
dress, and in the wide white sleeves of fine 
cambric that covered her arms from the 
shoulder to the wrist. She had a morally 
delicate air, a look of scrupulous nicety and 
lavender-stored linen. She had long dark 
lashes ; and when they rose, the eyelids re- 
vealed eyes of uncommon bearfcy. She had 
good features, good teeth, and a good com- 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 153 

plexion. The main feeling she produced and 
left was of ladyhood — little more. 

Sunday afternoon came fifty-two times in 
the year. I mention this because then always, 
and nearly then only, could one calculate on 
seeing them together. It came to them in a 
surburb of London, and the look of it was 
dull. Doubtless Mr. Dempster’s dinner and 
his repose after it were interesting to him, 
but I cannot help thinking his wife found it 
dreary. She had, however, got used to it. 
The house was a good old one, of red brick, 
much larger than they required, but not ex- 
pensive, and had a general look of the refine- 
ment of its mistress. In the summer the 
windows of the dining-room would generally 
be open, for they looked into a really lovely 
garden behind the house, and the scent of the 
jasmine that crept all around them would 
come in plentifully. I wonder what the 
scent of jasmine did in Duncan Dempster’s 
world. Perhaps it never got farther than 
the general ante-chamber of the sensorium. 
It often made his wife sad — she could not 
tell why. To him I daresay it smelt agree- 
able, but I can hardly believe it ever woke 
in him that dreamy sensation it gave her — 
of something she had not had enough of, 
she could not say what. When the heat was 
gone off a little he would walk out on the 
lawn, which was well kept and well watered, 
with many flowering shrubs about it. Why 
be did so, I cannot tell. He looked at 


154 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


nothing in particular, only walked about for 
a few minutes, no doubt derived some pleasure 
of a mild nature from something, and walked 
in again to tea. One might have expected 
he would have cultivated the acquaintance of 
his garden a little, if it were only for the 
pleasure the contrast would give him when 
he got back to his loved office, for a greater 
contrast could not well have been found than 
between his dingy dreary haunt on week- 
days — a place which nothing but duty could 
have made other than repugnant to any free 
soul — and this nest of greenery and light 
and odour. Sweet scents floated in clouds 
invisible about the place; flower eyes and 
stars and hells and bunches shone and glowed 
and lurked all around ; his very feet might 
have learned a lesson of that which is beyond 
the sense from the turf he trod ; but all the 
time, if he were not exactly seeing in his 
mind’s eye the walls and tables of his office 
in the City square, his thoughts were not the 
less brooding over such business as he there 
transacted. For Mr. Dempster's was not 
a free soul. How could it be when all 
his energies were given to making money ? 
This he counted his calling — and I believe 
actually contrived to associate some feeling 
of duty with the notion of leaving behind 
him a plump round sum of money, as if 
money in accumulation and following flood, 
instead of money in peaceful current, were 
the good thing for the world ! Hence the 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


155 


whole realm of real life, the universe of 
thought and growth, was a high-hedged park 
to him, within which he never even tried to 
look — not even knowing that he was shut 
out from it, for the hedge was of his own 
growing. What shall ever wake such a man 
to a sense of indwelling poverty, or make 
him begin to hunger after any lowliest ex- 
pansioQ ? Does a reader retort, “ The man 
was comfortable, and why should he be 
troubled ? ” If the end of being, I answer, 
is only comfort in self, I yield. But what if 
there should be at the heart of the universe 
a Thought to which the being of such men 
is distasteful ? What if to that Thought 
they look blots in light, ugly things ? May 
there not lie in that direction some possible 
reason why they should bethink themselves ? 
Dempster, however, was not yet a clinker 
out of which all the life was burned, however 
much he looked like one. There was in him 
that which might yet burn — and give light 
and heat. 

On the Sunday evenings Mrs. Dempster 
would have gladly gone to church again, if 
only — though to herself she never allowed 
this for one of her reasons — to slip from 
under the weight of her husband’s presence. 
He seldom spoke to her more than a sentence 
at a time, but he did like to have her near 
him, and I suppose held, through the bare 
presence, some kind of dull one-sided com- 
munication with her ; what did a woman 


156 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


know about business ? and wbat did be know 
about except business ? It is true be bad a 
rudimentary pleasure in music — and would 
sometimes ask ber to play to bim, when be 
would listen, and after bis fashion enjoy. 
But altbougb bere was a gift that might be 
developed until his soul could echo the music 
of the spheres, the embodied souls of Handel 
or Mendelssohn were to bim but clouds of 
sound wrapped about kernels — let me say of 
stock or bonds. 

For a year or so after their marriage it bad 
been the custom that, the first thing after 
breakfast on Monday morning, she should 
bring him her account-book, that they might 
together go over her week’s expenses. She 
must cultivate the business habits in which, 
he said, he found her more than deficient. 
How could he endure in a wife what would 
have been preposterous in a clerk, and would 
have led to his immediate dismissal ? It was 
in his eyes necessary that the same strict 
record of receipt and expenditure should be 
kept in the household as in the office ; how 
else was one to know in what direction 
things were going ? he said. He required of 
his wife, therefore, that every individual 
thing that cost money, even to what she 
spent upon her own person, should be en- 
tered in her book. She had no money of her 
own, neither did he allow her any special 
sum for her private needs ; but he made her 
a tolerably liberal weekly allowance, from 


HUSBAND AND WIPE. 


157 


which she had to pay everything except 
house-rent and taxes, an arrangement which 
I cannot believe a good one, as it will in- 
evitably lead some conscientious wives to 
self-denial severer than necessary, and on the 
other hand will tempt the vulgar nature to 
make a purse for herself by mean savings off 
everybody else. It was especially distasteful 
to Mrs. Dempster to have to set down every 
little article of personal requirement that she 
bought. It would probably have seemed to 
her but a trifle had they both been young 
when they married, and had there been that 
tenderness of love between them which so 
soon sets everything more than right ; but as 
it was, she could never get over the feeling 
that the man was strange to her. As it was 
she would have got over this. But there was 
in her a certain constitutional lack of pre- 
cision, combined with a want of energy and 
a weakness of will, that rendered her more 
than careless where her liking was not in- 
terested. Hence, while she would have been 
horrified at playing a wrong note or singing 
out of tune, she not only had no anxiety, for 
the thing’s own sake, to have her accounts 
correct, but shrunk from every effort in that 
direction. Now I can perfectly understand 
her recoil from the whole affair, with her 
added dislike to the smallness of the thing 
required of her ; but seeing she did begin 
with doing it after a fashion, it is not so 
easy to understand why, doing it, she should 


158 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


not make a consolation of doing it with abso- 
lute exactness. Not even her dread of her 
husband’s dissatisfaction — which was by no 
means small — could prevail to make her, in- 
stead of still trusting a memory that con- 
stantly played her false, put down a thing 
at once, nor postpone it to a far less con- 
venient season. Hence it came that her 
accounts, though never much out, never 
balanced; and the weekly audit, while it 
grew more and more irksome to the one, 
grew more and more unsatisfactory to the 
Other. For to Mr. Dempster’s dusty eyes 
exactitude wore the robe of rectitude, and 
before long, precisely and merely from the 
continued unsatisfactory condition of her ac- 
counts, he began, in a hidden corner of his 
righteous soul, to reflect on the moral condi- 
tion of his wife herself as unsatisfactory. 
Now such it certainly was, but he was not 
the man to judge it correctly, or to perceive 
the true significance of her failing. In busi- 
ness, while scrupulous as to the requirements 
of custom and recognized right, he neverthe- 
less did things from which her soul would 
have recoiled like “ the tender horns of 
cockled snails ; ” yet it was to him not merely 
a strange and inexplicable fact that she 
should never be able to show to a penny, nay, 
often not to a shilling or eighteenpence, how 
the week’s allowance went, but a painful one 
as indicating something beyond perversity. 
And truly it was no very hard task he re- 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


159 


quired of her, for, seeing they had no chil- 
dren, only three servants, and saw little 
company, her housekeeping could not be a 
very heavy or involved nifair. Perhaps if it 
had been more difficult she would have done 
it better, but anyhow she hated the whole 
thing, procrastinated, and setting down 
several things together, was sure to forget 
some article or mistake some price ; yet not 
one atom more would she distrust her memory 
the next time she was tempted. But it was 
a small fault at worst, and if her husband had 
loved her enough to understand the bearings 
of it in relation to her mental and moral con- 
dition he would have tried to content himself 
that at least she did not exceed her allow- 
ance ; and would of all things have avoided 
making such a matter a burden upon the 
consciousness of one so differently educated, 
if not constituted, from himself. It is but 
fair to add on the other side that, if she had 
loved him after anything like a wifely ideal, 
which I confess was not yet possible to her, 
it would not have been many weeks before 
she had a first correct account to show him. 
Convinced, at length, that accuracy was not 
to be had from her, and satisfying himself 
with dissatisfaction, he one morning threw 
from him the little ruled book, and declared, 
in a wrath which he sought to smotlier into 
dignified but hopeless rebuke, that he would 
trouble himself with her no further. She 
burst into tears, took up the book, left the 


160 


THE BUTCHER S BILLS. 


room, cried a little, resolved to astonish him 
the next Monday, and never set down another 
item. When it came, and breakfast was 
over, he gave her the usual cheque, and left 
at once for town. Nor had the accounts ever 
again been alluded to between them. 

Now this might have been very well, or 
at least not very ill, if both had done toler- 
ably well thereafter — that is, if the one had 
continued to attend to her expenditure as 
well as before, and the other, when he threw 
away the account-book, had dismissed from 
his mind the whole matter. But Dempster 
was one of those dangerous men — more 
dangerous, however, to themselves than to 
others — who never forget, that is, get over, 
an offence or disappointment. They respect 
themselves so much, and, out of their respect 
for themselves, build so much upon success, 
set so much by never being defeated but 
always gaining their point, that when they 
are driven to confess themselves foiled, the 
confession is made from the “ poor dumb 
mouth” of a wound that cannot be healed. 
It is there for ever — will be there at least 
until they find another Gfod to worship than 
their own paltry selves. Hence it came that 
the bourn between the two spiritual estates 
yawned a little wider at one point, and a 
mist of dissatisfaction would not unfrequently 
rise from a certain stagnant pool in its 
hollow. The cause was paltry in one sense, 
but nothing to which belongs the name of 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


161 


Cause can fail to mingle the element of 
awfulness even with its paltriness. Its worst 
effect was that it hindered approximation in 
other parts of their marching natures. 

And as to Mrs. Dempster, I am sorry for 
the apparent justification which what I have 
to confess concerning her must give to the 
severe whims of such husbands as hers : from 
that very Monday morning she began to 
grow a little careless about her expenditure 
— which she had never been before. By 
degrees bill after bill was allowed to filch 
from the provision of the following week, and 
when that was devoured, then from that of 
the week after. It was not that she was in 
the least more expensive upon herself, or that 
she consciously wasted anything ; but, alto- 
gether averse to housekeeping, she ceased to 
exercise the same outlook upon the expendi- 
ture of the house, did not keep her horses 
together, left the management more and more 
to her cook ; while the consciousness that she 
was not doing her duty made her more and 
more uncomfortable, and the knowledge that 
things were going farther and farther wrong, 
made her hate the idea of accounts worse and 
worse, until she came at length to regard 
them with such a loathing as might have 
fitted some extreme of moral evil. The bills 
which were supposed by her husband to be 
regularly settled every week were at last 
months behind, and the week’s money spent 
in meeting the most pressing of its demands, 


162 


THE BUTCHER'S BILLS. 


while what it could no longer cover was cast 
upon the growing heap of evil for the time to 
come. 

I must say this for her, however, that 
there was a small sum of money she expected 
on the death of a crazy aunt, which, if she 
could but lay hold of it without her hus- 
band’s knowledge, she meant to devote to the 
clearing off of everything, when she vowed to 
herself to do better in the time to come. 

The worst thing in it all was that her fear 
of her husband kept increasing, and that she 
felt more and more uncomfortable in his pre- 
sence. Hence that troubled look in her eye, 
always more marked when her husband sat 
dozing in his chair of a Sunday afternoon. 

It was natural, too, that, although they 
never quarrelled, their intercourse should not 
grow of a more tender character. Seldom 
was there a salient point in their few scat- 
tered sentences of conversation, except, in- 
deed, it were some piece of news either had 
to communicate. Occasionally the wife read 
something from the newspaper, but never 
except at her husband’s request. In general 
he enjoyed his newspaper over a chop at his 
office. Two or three times since their mar- 
riage — now eight years — he had made a 
transient resolve pointing at the improve- 
ment of her mind, and to that end had taken 
from his great glass-armoured bookcase some 
standard work — invariably, I believe, upon 
party-politics — from which he had made 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


163 


her read him a chapter. But, unhappily, 
she had always ^ot to the end of it with- 
out gaining the slightest glimmer of a true 
notion of what the author was driving at. 

It almost moves me to pity to think of the 
vagueness of that rudimentary humanity in 
Mr. Dempster which made him dream of 
doing something to improve his wife’s mind. 
What did he ever do to improve his own ? 
It is hard to understand how horses find 
themselves so comfortable in their stables 
that, be the day ever so fine, the country 
ever so lovely, the air ever so exhilarating, 
they are always rejoiced to get back into 
their dull twilight : it is harder to me to 
understand how Mr. Dempster could be so 
comfortable in his own mind that he never 
wanted to get out of it, even at the risk of 
being beside himself; but no doubt the dim- 
ness of its twilight had a good deal to do 
with his content. And then there is that in 
every human mind which no man’s neigh- 
bour, nay, no man himself, can understand. 
My neighbour may in his turn be regarding 
my mind as a gloomy place to live in, while 
I find it no undesirable residence — though 
chiefly because of the number of windows it 
affords me for looking out of it. Still, if 
Dempster’s dingy office in the City was not 
altogether a sufficing type of the mind that 
used it, I consider it a very fairly good one 
But wherein was Mrs. Dempster so ver^ 
different from her husband as I rudely fancy 


164 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


some of my readers imagining her ? What- 
ever may have been her reasons for marrying 
him — one would suppose they must have 
been weighty — to do so she must have been 
in a very undeveloped condition, and in that 
condition she still remained. I do not mean 
that she was less developed thau ninty-nine 
out of the hundred : most women affect me 
only as valuable crude material out of which 
precious things are making. How much they 
might be, must be, shall be ! For now they 
stand like so many Lot’s- wives — so many 
rough-hewn marble blocks, rather, of which 
a Divinity is shaping the ends. Mrs. Demp- 
ster had all the making of a lovely woman, 
but notwithstanding her grace, her beauty, 
her sweetness, her lark-like ballading too, 
she was a very ordinary woman in that 
region of her which knew what she meant 
when she said “ I.” Of this fact she had 
hardly a suspicion, however; for until aspi- 
ration brings humility, people are generally 
pretty well satisfied with themselves, having 
no idea what poor creatures they are. She 
saw in her mirror a superior woman, re- 
garded herself as one of the finer works of 
creation. The worst was that from the first 
she had counted herself superior to her hus- 
band, and in marrying him had felt not 
merely that she was conferring a favour, 
which every husband would allow, but that 
she was lowering herself without elevating 
him. Now it is true that she was pleasanter 


HUSBAKD AND WIFE. 


165 


to look at, that her manners were sweeter, and 
her notions of the becoming far less easily 
satisfied than his ; also that she was a little 
less deficient in vague reverence for certain 
forms of the higher than he. But I know 
of nothing in her to determine her classifi- 
cation as of greater value than he, except 
indeed that she was on the whole rather 
more honest. She read novels and he did 
not ; she passed shallow judgment, where he 
scorned to judge ; she read all the middling 
poetry that came in her way, and copied 
books full of it ; but she could no more have 
appreciated one of Milton’s or Shakspere’s 
smallest poems than she could have laughed 
over a page of Chinese. She liked to hear 
this and that popular preacher, and when her 
husband called his sermons humbug, she 
heard it with a shocked countenance ; but 
was she better or worse than her husband 
when, admiring them as she did, she per- 
mitted them to have no more influence upon 
her conduct than if they had been the merest 
humbug ever uttered by ambitious dema- 
gogue ? In truth, I cannot see that in the 
matter of worth there was much as yet to 
choose between them. 

It is hardly necessary, then, to say that 
there was little appreciable approximation of 
any kind going on between them. If only 
they would have read Dickens together ! 
Who knows what might have come of it! 
But this dull close animal proximity, without 


166 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


tlie smallest conscious nearness of heart or 
mind or soul — and so little chance, from very 
lack of wants, for showing each other kind- 
nesses — surely it is a killing sort of thing ! 
And yet, and yet, there is always a some- 
thing — call it habit, or any poorest name you 
please — grows up between two who are much 
together, at least when they neither quarrel 
nor thwart each other’s designs, which, tend- 
ing with its roots towards the deeper human, 
blossoms into — a wretched little flower in- 
deed, yet afar off partaking of the nature of 
love. The Something seldom reveals its 
existence until they are parted. I suspect 
that with not a few, Death is the love- 
messenger at the stroke of whose dart the 
stream of love first begins to flow in the 
selfish bosom. 

It is now necessary to mention a little 
break in the monotony of Mrs. Dempster’s 
life, which, but for what came afterwards, 
could claim no record. One morning her 
page announced Major Strong, and possibly 
she received the gentleman who entered with 
a brighter face than she had ever shown her 
husband. The major had just arrived from 
India. He had been much at her father’s 
house while she was yet a mere girl, being 
then engaged to one of her sisters, who died 
after he went abroad, and before he could 
return to marry her. He was now a widower, 
a fine-looking, frank, manly fellow. The ex- 
pression of his countenance was little altered, 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


167 


and tlie sight of him revived in the memory 
of Mrs. Dempster many recollections of a 
happy girlhood, when the prospect of such a 
life as she now led with tolerable content 
would have seemed simply unendurable. 
When her husband came home she told him 
as much as he cared to hear of the visitor 
she had had, and he made no objection to 
her asking him to dine the next Sunday. 
When he arrived Mr. Dempster saw a man 
of his own age, bronzed and big, with not 
much waist left, hut a good carriage and 
pleasant face. He made himself agreeable 
at dinner, appreciated his host’s wine, and 
told good stories that pleased the business 
man as showing that he knew “ what was 
what.” He accorded him his more par- 
ticular approval, speaking to his wife, on 
the ground that he was a man of the world, 
with none of the army slang about him. Mr. 
Dempster was not aware that he had himself 
more business peculiarities than any officer 
in her majesty’s service had military ones. 

After this Major Strong frequently called 
upon Mrs. Dempster. They were good 
friends, and did each other no harm what- 
ever, and the husband neither showed nor 
felt the least jealousy. They sang together, 
occasionally went out shopping, and three 
or four times went together to the play. Mr. 
Dempster, so long as he had his usual com- 
forts, did not pine in his wife’s absence, but 
did show a little more pleasure when she 


168 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


came home to him than nsnally when he 
came home to her. This lasted for a few 
months. Then the major went hack to India, 
and for a time the lady missed him a good 
deal, which, considering the dulness of her 
life, was not very surprising or reprehensible. 


CHAPTER II. 

AN ASTONISHMENT. 

Now comes the strange part of my story. 

One evening the housemaid opened the 
door to Mr. Dempster on his return from the 
city ; and perhaps the fact that it was the 
maid, and not the page as usual, roused his 
observation, which, except in business matters, 
was not remarkably operative. He glanced 
at the young woman, when an eye far less 
keen than his could not have failed to re- 
mark a strangely excited expression on her 
countenance. 

“ Where is the boy ? ” he asked. 

‘‘ Just run to the doctor s, sir,” she answered. 

Then first he remembered that when he 
left in the morning his wife had not been 
feeling altogether well, but he had never 
thought of her since. 

“ How is your mistress ? ” he said. 

“ She’s rather poorly, sir, but — but — she’s 
as well as could be expected.” 


AN ASTONISHMENT. 


169 


“ What does the fool mean ? ” said Dempster 
to himself, and very nearly said it aloud, for 
he was not over polite to any in his service. 
But he did not say it aloud. He advanced 
into the hall with deliberation, and made for 
the stair. 

“ Oh, please sir,” the maid cried in a tone 
of perturbation, when, turning from shutting 
the door, she saw his intention, “you can’t 
go up to mis’ess’s room just at this minute, 
sir. Please go in the dining-room, sir.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” he asked, turning 
angrily upon the girl, for of all things he 
hated mystery. 

Like every one else in the house, and 
office both, she stood in awe of him, and his 
look frightened her. 

“ Please go in the dining-room,” she gasped 
entreatingly 

“ What ! ” he said and did turn towards 
the dining-room, “ is your mistress so ill she 
can’t see me ? ” 

“ Oh, no, sir ! — at least I don’t know 
exactly. Cook’s with her, sir. She’s over 
the worst, anyhow.” 

“ What on earth do you mean, girl ? Speak 
out, will you? What is the matter with 
your mistress ? ” 

As he spoke he stepped into the room, the 
maid following him. The same moment he 
spied a whitish bundle of something on the 
rug in front of the fire. 

“ What do you mean by leaving things 


170 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


like that in the dining-room ? ” he went on 
more angrily still. 

“ Please, sir,” answered the girl, going and 
lifting the bundle carefiill}-, ‘‘ it’s the baby ! ” 

“ The baby ! ” shouted Mr. Dempster, and 
looked at her from head to foot. “ What 
baby?” Then bethinking himself that it 
must belong to some visitor in the drawing- 
room with his wife, he moderated his tone. 
“ Make haste ; take it away ! ” he said. “ I 
don’t want babies here ! There’s a time and 
a place for everything ! — What are you 
about ? ” 

For, instead of obeying her master and 
taking it away, the maid was carefully 
looking in the blanket for the baby. Having 
found it and turned aside the covering from 
its face, she came nearer, and holding up the 
little vision, about the size and colour of a 
roll of red wax taper, said : — 

“ Look at it, sir ! It’s your own, and 
worth looking at.” 

Never before had she dared speak to him 
so ! 

I will not venture to assert that Mr. 
Dempster turned white, but his countenance 
changed, and he dropped into the chair 
behind him, feeling less of a business man 
than had been his consciousness for the last 
twenty years. He was hit hard. The abso- 
lutely Incredible had hit him. Babies might 
be born in a day, but surely not without 
previous preparation on the part of nature 


AlSr ASTONISHMENT. 


171 


at least, if not on that of the mother ; and 
in this case if the mother had prepared her- 
self, certainly she had not prepared him for 
the event. It was as if the treasure of 
Nature’s germens were tumbling all together. 
His head swam. He could not speak a 
word. 

‘‘ Yes, sir,” the maid went on, relieved 
of her trepidation in perceiving that her 
master too was mortal, and that her word 
had such power over him — proud also of 
knowing more of his concerns than he did 
himself, “ she was took about an hour and 
a half ago. We’ve kep’ sendin’ an’ sendin’ 
after the doctor, but he ain’t never been yet ; 
only cook, she knows a deal an’ she says 
she’s been very bad, sir. But the young 
gentleman come at last, bless him ! and now 
she’s doin’ as well as could be expected, sir — 
cook says.” 

“ Grod bless me ! ” said the astonished 
father, and relapsed into the silence of 
bewilderment. 

Eight years married with never a glimmer 
of offspring — and now, all at once, and with- 
out a whisper of warning, the father of a 
‘‘young gentleman ! ” How could it be other 
than perplexing — discomposing, indeed ! — yet 
it was right pleasant too. Only it would have 
been more pleasant if experience could have 
justified the affair ! Nature — no, not Nature 
— or, if Nature, then Nature sure in some 
unnatural mood, had stolen a march upon 


172 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


him, had gone contrary to all that had ever 
])een revealed of her doings before ! and 
why had she pitched on him — ^just him, 
Duncan Dempster, to exercise one of her 
more grotesque and wayward moods upon ? 
— to play at hide-and-seek with after this 
fashion ? She had not treated him with 
exactly proper respect, he thought, or, rather 
vaguely felt. 

“ Business is business,” he remarked, under 
his breath, “ and this cannot be called proper 
business behaviour. What is there about 
me to make game of ? Keally, my wife 
ought ” 

What his wife ought or ought not to have 
done, however, had not yet made itself clear 
to him, and his endeavour to excogitate being 
in that direction broken off, gave way to the 
pleasure of knowing himself a father, or per- 
haps more truly of having an heir. In the 
strength of it he rose, went to the cellaret, 
and poured himself out a glass of his 
favourite port, which he sat down to drink 
in silence and meditation. He was rather 
a picture just then and there, though not a 
very lovely one, seated, with his hat still on 
his head, in the middle of the room, upon a 
chair half-way between the dining-table and 
the sideboard, with his glass of wine in his 
hand. He was pondering partly the pleasure, 
but still mainly the peculiarity of his position. 
A bishop once told me that, shortly after he 
had been raised to the episcopal dignity, a 


AN ASTONISHMENT. 


173 


friend’s horses, whose driver had tumbled off 
the box drunk, ran away with him, and 
upset the carriage. He crept out of the 
window over his head, and the first thought 
that came to him as he sat perched on the 
side of the carriage, while it was jumbled 
along by the maddened horses, was, ‘‘ What 
do bishops do in such circumstances ? ” 
Equally perplexing was the question Demp- 
ster had to ask himself : how husbands who, 
after being married eight years, suddenly 
and unexpectedly received the gift of a first- 
born, were in the habit of comporting them- 
selves ! He poured himself out another glass, 
and with it came the reflection, both amusing 
and consoling, that his brother, who was 
confidently expecting his tidy five figures to 
crown the earthly bliss of one or more of his 
large family some day, would be equally but 
less agreeably surprised. “ Serve him right!” 
he said to himself. “ What business have 
they to be looking out for my death ? ” And 
for a moment the heavens appealed a little 
more just than he was ordinarily in the habit 
of regarding them. Pie said to himself he 
would work harder than ever now. There 
would now be some good in making money ! 
He had never given his mind to it yet, he 
said: now the world should see what he could 
do when he did give his mind to it 1 

Hitherto gathering had been his main 
pleasure, but with the thought of his money 
would now not seldom be mingled the 


174 


THE butcher's BILLS. 


thought of the little thing in the blanket ! 
He began to find himself strangely happy. 
I use the wrong phrase — for the fact is, he 
had never yet found himself at all ; he knew 
nothing of the person except a self-painted 
and immensely flattered portrait that hung 
in the innermost chamber of his heart — I 
mean the innermost chamber he knew any- 
thing of : there were many chambers there of 
which he did not even know the doors. Yet 
a few minutes as he sat there, and he was 
actually cherishing a little pride in the wife 
who had done so much better for him than 
he had at length come to expect. If not a 
good accountant, she was at least a good 
wife, and a very fair housekeeper : he had 
no doubt she would prove a good mother. 
He would gladly have gone to her at once, to 
let her know how much he was pleased with 
her behaviour. As for that little bit of red 
clay — “ terra cotta,” he called it to himself, 
as he looked round with a smile at the 
blanket, which the housemaid had replaced on 
the rug before the fire — who could imagine 
him a potentate upon ’Change — perhaps in 
time a director of European affairs ! He was 
not in the way of joking — of all things about 
money ; the very thought of business filled 
him from top to toe with seriousness ; but he 
did make that small joke, and accompany it 
with a grim smile. 

He was startled from his musing by the 
entrance of the doctor, who had in the mean- 


AN ASTONISHMENT. 


175 


time arrived and seen the lady, and now 
came to look at the baby. He congratulated 
Mr. Dempster on having at length a son and 
heir, but warned him that his wife was far 
from being beyond danger yet. The whole 
thing was entirely out of the common, he 
said, and she must be taken the greatest pos- 
sible care of. The words woke a gentle pity 
in the heart of the man, for by nature all 
men have some tenderness for women in 
such circumstances, but they did not trouble 
him greatly — for such dangers belonged to 
their calling, their business in life, and, doubt- 
less, if she had attended to that business 
earlier she would have found it easier. 

“ Did you ever know such a thing before, 
doctor ? ” he asked, with the importance of 
one honoured by a personal visit from the 
Marvellous. 

“ Never in my own practice,” answered the 
doctor, whom the cook had instructed in the 
wonders of the case, “ but I have read of 
such a thing.” And Mr. Dempster swelled 
like a turkey-cock. 

ft was several days before he was allowed 
to see the mother. Perhaps had she ex- 
pressed a strong desire to see him, it might 
have been risked sooner, but she had neither 
expressed nor manifested any.. He kissed 
her, spoke a few stupid words in a kind tone, 
asking her how she did, but paying no heed 
to her answer, and turned aside to look at 
the baby. 


176 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


Mrs. Dempster recovered but slowly, and 
not very satisfactorily. She did not seem 
to care much about the child. She tried 
to nurse him, but was not very successful. 
She took him when the nurse brought him, 
and yielded him again with the same indif- 
ference, showing neither pleasure to receive 
nor unwillingness to part with him. The 
nurse did not fail to observe it and remark 
upon it : she had never seen a mother care so 
little for her child ! there was little of the 
mother in her any way ! it was no wonder 
she was so long about it. It troubled the 
father a little that she should not care for his 
child : some slight fermentation had com- 
menced in the seemingly dead mass of human 
affection that had lain so long neglected in 
his being, and it seemed strange to him that, 
while he was living for the child in the City, 
she should be so indifferent to him at home. 
For already he had begun to keep his vow, 
already his greater keenness in business was 
remarked in the City. But it boded little 
good for either that the gift of God should 
stir up in him the worship of Mammon. 
More sons are damned by their fathers’ 
money than by anything else whatever out- 
side of themselves. 

There was the excuse to be made for Mrs. 
Dempster that she continued far from strong 
— and her husband made it : he would have 
made it more heartily if he had himself ever 
in his life known what it was to be ill. By 


AN ASTONISHMENT. 


177 


degrees she grew stronger, however, nntil, to 
persons who had not known her before, she 
would have seemed in tolerable health. For 
a week or two after she was again going 
about the house, she continued to nurse the 
baby, but after that she became unable to 
do so, and therewith began to neglect him 
entirely. She never asked to see him, and 
when the nurse brought him would turn her 
head aside, and tell her to take it away. So 
far from his being a pleasure to her, the very 
sight of the child brought the hot dew upon 
her forehead. Her husband frowned and 
wondered, but, unaccustomed to open his 
mind either to her or to any one else, not 
unwisely sought to understand the thing 
before speaking of it, and in the meantime 
commenced a genuine attempt to make up to 
the baby for his mother’s neglect. Almost 
without a notion how even to take him in 
his arms, he would now send for him the 
moment he had had his tea, and after a 
fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the nurse, 
would dandle and caress him, and strut about 
with him before his wife, glancing up at her 
every now and then, to point the lesson that 
such was the manner in which a parent 
ought to behave to a child. In his presence 
she never made any active show of her dis- 
like, but her look seemed all the time fixed 
on something far away, as if she had nothing 
to do with the affair. 


N 


178 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


CHAPTER III. 

ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT. 

But a second and very different astonish- 
ment awaited Mr. Dempster. Again one 
evening, on his return from the City, he 
saw a strange look on the face of the girl 
who opened the door — but this time it was 
a look of fear. 

‘‘ Well?” he said, in a tone at once alarmed 
and peremptory. 

She made no answer, but turned whiter 
than before. 

“ Where is your mistress ? ” he demanded. 

‘‘ Nobody knows, sir,” she answered. 

“ Nobody knows ! What would you have 
me understand by such an answer ? ” 

“ It’s the bare truth, sir. Nobody knows 
where she is.” 

“ Grod bless me ! ” cried the husband. 

What dpes it all mean ? ” 

And again he sunk down upon a chair — 
this time in the hall, and stared at the girl 
as if waiting further enlightenment. 

But there was little enough to be had. 
Only one point was clear : his wife was 
nowhere to be found. He sent for every 
one in the house, and cross-questioned each 
to discover the last occasion on which she 
had been seen. It was some time since she 


ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT. 


179 


had been missed ; how long before that she 
had been seen there was no certainty to be 
had. He ran to the doctor, then from one 
to another of her acquaintance, then to her 
mother, who lived on the opposite side of 
London. She, like the rest, could tell him 
nothing. In her anxiety she would have 
gone back with him, but he was surly, and 
would not allow her. It was getting towards 
morning before he reached home, hut no 
relieving news awaited him. What to think 
was as much a perplexity to him as what 
to do. He was not in the agony in which a 
man would have been who thoroughly loved 
his wife, but he cared enough about her to 
feel uncomfortable; and the cries of the child, 
who was suffering from some ailment, made 
him miserable : in his perplexity and dull 
sense of helplessness he wondered whether 
she might not have given the baby poison 
before she went. Then the thing would 
make such a talk ! and, of all things, Duncan 
Dempster hated being talked about. How 
busy people’s brains would be with all his 
affairs ! How many explanations of the mys- 
tery would be suggested on ’Change ! Some 
would say, “What business had a man like 
him with a fine lady for a wife ? one so much 
younger than himself too ! ” He could re- 
member making the same remark of another, 
before he was married. “ Served him right!” 
they would say. And with that the first 
movement of suspicion awoke in him — purely 


180 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


and solely from his own mind’s reflection of 
the imagined minds of others. While in his 
mind’s ear he heard them talking, almost 
before he knew what they meant the words 
came to him: “There was that Major Strong, 
you know ! ” 

“ She’s gone to him ! ” he cried aloud, and, 
springing from the bed on which he had 
thrown himself, he paced the chamber in a 
fury. He had no word for it but hers that 
he was now in India ! They had only been 
waiting till — By heaven, that child was none 
of his ! And therewith rushed into his mind 
the conviction that everything was thus ex- 
plained. No man ever yet entertained an 
unhappy suspicion, but straightway an army 
of proofs positive came crowding to the 
service of the lie. It is astounding with 
what manifest probability everything will 
fall in to prove that a fact which has no 
foundation whatever ! There is no end to 
the perfection with which a man may fool 
himself while taking absolute precautions 
against being fooled by others. Every fact, 
being a living fact, has endless sides and 
relations ; but of all these, the man whose 
being hangs upon one thought, will see only 
those sides and relations which fall in with 
that thought. Dempster even recalled the 
words of the maid, “ It’s mis’ess’s,” as em- 
bodying the girl’s belief that it was not mas- 
ter’s. Where a man, whether by nature 
jealous or not, is in a jealous condition, there 


ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT. 181 

is no need of an lago to parade before him 
the proofs of his wrong. It was because 
Shakespere would neither have Desdemona 
less than perfect, nor Othello other than the 
most trusting and least suspicious of men, 
that he had to invent an all hut incredible 
villain to effect the needful catastrophe. 

But why should a man, who has cared so 
little for his wife, become instantly, upon the 
bare suspicion, so utter a prey to consuming 
misery ? There was a character in his suffer- 
ing which could not be attributed to any 
degree of anger, shame, or dread of ridicule. 
The truth was, there lay in his being a pos- 
sibility of love to his wife far beyond any- 
thing his miserably stunted consciousness had 
an idea of; and the conviction, of her faith- 
lessness now wrought upon him in the office 
of Death, to let him know what he had lost. 
It magnified her beauty in his eyes, her 
gentleness, her grace ; and he thought with 
a pang how little he had made of her or it. 

But the next moment wrath at the idea of 
another man’s child being imposed upon him 
as his, with the consequent loss of his pre- 
cious money, swept every other feeling be- 
fore it. For by law the child was his, who- 
ever might be the father of it. During a 
whole minute he felt on the point of tying 
a stone about its neck, carrying it out, and 
throwing it into the river Lea. Then, with 
the laugh of a hyena, he set about arranging 
in his mind the proofs of her guilt. First 


182 


THE BUTCHER’S BILLS. 


came eiglit cliildless years with himself ; 
next the concealment of her condition, and 
the absurd pretence that she had known 
nothing of it ; then the trouble of mind into 
which she had fallen ; then her strange un- 
natural aversion to her own child ; and now, 
last of all, conclusive of a guilty conscience, 
her flight from his house. He would give 
himself no trouble to find her ; why should 
he search after his own shame ! He would 
neither attempt to conceal nor to explain the 
fact that she had left him — people might say 
what they pleased — try him for murder if 
they liked ! As to the child she had so 
kindly left to console him for her absence, he 
would not drown^him, neither would he bring 
him up in his house ; he would give him an 
ordinary education, and apprentice him to a 
trade. For his money, he would leave it to 
a hospital — a rich one, able to defend his 
will if disputed. For what was the child? 
A monster — a creature that had no right to 
existence ! 

Not one of those who knew him best 
would have believed him capable of being 
so moved, nor did one of them now know it, 
for he hid his sufi’ering with the success of a 
man not unaccustomed to make a mask of his 
face. There are not a few men who, except 
something of the nature of a catastrophe 
befall them, will pass through life without 
having or affording a suspicion of what is 
in them. Everything hitherto had tended 


ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT. 


183 


to suppress the live elements of Duncan 
Dempster; but now, like the fire of a vol- 
cano in a land of ice, the vitality in him 
had begun to show itself. 

Sheer weariness drove him, as the morn- 
ing began to break, to lie down again ; but 
he neither undressed nor slept, and rose at 
his usual hour. When he entered the dining- 
room, where breakfast was laid as usual — 
only for one instead of two — he found by his 
plate, among letters addressed to his wife, 
a packet directed to himself. It had not 
been through the post, and the address was 
in his wife’s hand. He opened it. A sheet 
of paper was wrapped around a roll of unpaid 
butcher’s bills, amounting to something like 
eighty pounds, and a note from the butcher 
craving immediate settlement. On the sheet 
of paper was written, also in his wife’s hand, 
these words : “ I am quite unworthy of being 
your wife any longer ; ” that was all. 

Now here, to a man who had loved her 
enough to understand her, was a clue to the 
whole — to Dempster it was the strongest 
possible confirmation of what he had already 
concluded. To him it appeared as certain as 
anything he called truth, that for years, 
while keeping a fair face to her husband — 
a man who had never refused her anything 
— he did not recall the fact that almost never 
had she asked or he offered anything — she 
had been deceiving him, spending money she 
would not account for, pretending to pay 


184 


THE BUTCHER'S BILLS. 


everything when she had been ruining his 
credit with the neighbourhood, making him, 
a far richer man than any but himself knew, 
appear to be living beyond his means, when 
he was every month investing far more than 
he spent. It was injury upon injury ! Then, 
as a last mark of her contempt, she had 
taken pains that these beggarly butcher’s 
bills should reach him from her own hand ! 
He would trouble himself about such a 
woman not a moment longer ! 

He went from breakfast to his omnibus as 
usual, walked straight to his office, and spent 
the day according to custom. I need hardly 
say that the first thing he did was to 
write a cheque for the butcher. He made 
no further inquiry after her whatever, nor 
was any made of him there, for scarcely one 
of the people with whom he did business had 
been to his house, or had even seen his wife. 

In the suburb where he lived it was dif- 
ferent ; but he paid no heed to any inquiry, 
beyond saying he knew nothing about her. 
To her relatives he said that if they wanted 
her they might find her for themselves. She 
had gone to please herself, and he was not 
going to ruin himself by running about the 
world after her. 

Night after night he came home to his 
desolate house; took no comfort from his 
child ; made no confession that he stood in 
need of comiort. But he had a dull sensa- 
tion as if the sun had forsaken the world, 


ANOTHER ASTONISHMENT. 


185 


and an endless night had begun. The simile, 
of course, is mine — the sensation only was 
his ; he could never have expressed anything 
that went on in the region wherein men 
suffer. 

A few days made a marked difference in 
his appearance. He was a hard man ; but 
not so hard as people had thought him ; and 
besides, no man can rule his own spirit 
except he has the spirit of right on his side ; 
neither is any man proof against the inroads 
of good. Even Lady Macbeth was defeated 
by the imagination she had braved. Add to 
this, that no man can, even by those who 
understand him best, be labelled as a box 
containing such and such elements, for the 
humanity in him is deeper than any indi- 
viduality, and may manifest itself at some 
crisis in a way altogether beside expectation. 

His feeling was not at first of an elevated 
kind. After the grinding wrath had abated, 
self-pity came largely to the surface — not by 
any means a grand emotion, though very 
dear to boys and girls in their first conscious- 
ness of self, and in them pardonable enough. 
On the same ground it must be pardoned in 
a man who, with all his experience of the 
world, was more ignorant of the region of 
emotion, and more undeveloped morally, than 
multitudes of children : in him it was an 
indication that the shell was beginning to 
break. He said to himself that he was old 
beside her, and that she had begun to weary 


186 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


of him, and despise him. Gradually upon 
this, however, supervened at intervals a faint 
shadow of pity for her who could not have 
been happy or she would not have left him. 

Days and weeks passed, and there was no 
sign of Mrs. Dempster. The child was not 
sent out to nurse, and throve well enough. 
His father never took the least notice of him. 


CHAPTER IV. 

WHAT IT MEANT. 

Some of my readers, perhaps all of them, will 
have concluded that Mrs. Dempster was a 
little out of her mind. Such, indeed, was the 
fact, and one not greatly to be wondered at, 
after such a peculiar experience as she had 
had. Some small degree of congestion, and 
the consequent pressure on some portion of 
the brain, had sent certain faculties to sleep, 
and, perhaps, roused others into morbid ac- 
tivity. That it is impossible to tell where 
sanity ends and insanity begins, is a trite 
remark indeed ; but like many things which 
it is useless to say, it has the more need to 
be thought of. If I yield to an impulse of 
which I know I shall be ashamed, is it not 
the act of a madman? And ma^r not the 
act lead to a habit, and at length to a de- 
spised, perhaps feared and hated, old age, 


WHAT IT MEANT. 187 

twisting at the ragged ends of a miserable 
life ? 

However certain it is that mental dis- 
order had to do with Mrs. Dempster’s de- 
parture from her home, it is almost as certain 
she would never have gone had it not been 
for the unpaid bills haunting her conscious- 
ness, a combination of demon and ghost. 
The misery had all the time been growing 
upon her, and must have had no small share 
in the subversion of her microcosm. When 
that was effected, the evil thing that lay at 
the root of it all rose and pounced upon her. 
Wrong is its own avenger. She had been 
doing wrong, and knowingly for years, and 
now the plant of evil was blossoming towards 
its fruit. If one say the evil was but a trifle, 
I take her judgment, not his, upon that. She 
had been lazy towards dut^^ had persistently 
turned aside from what she knew to be her 
business, until she dared not even look at it. 
And now that the crisis was at hand, as 
omened by that letter from the butcher, with 
the sense of her wrong-doing was mingled 
the terror of her husband. What would he 
think, say, and do ? Not yet had she, after 
all these years, any deep insight into his 
character; else perhaps she might have read 
there that, much as he loved money, the 
pleasure of seeing signal failure follow the 
neglect of his instructions would quite com- 
pensate him for the loss. What the bills 
‘^mounted to, she had not an idea. Not until 


188 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


she had made up her mind to leave her home 
could she muster the courage to get them 
together. Then she even counted up the 
total and set down the sum in her memory — 
which sum thereafter haunted her like the 
name of her devil. 

As to the making up of her mind — she 
could remember very ‘little of that process — 
or indeed of the turning of her resolve into 
action. She left the House in the plainest 
dress her wardrobe could afford her, and with 
just one half-crown in her pocket. Her 
design was to seek a situation, as a refuge 
from her husband and his wrath. It was a 
curious thing, that, while it gave her no 
trouble to leave her baby, whom indeed she 
had not that day seen, and to whom for some 
time she had ceased to be necessary, her only 
notion was to get a place as nurse. 

At that time, I presume, there were few 
or no such offices for engaging servants as 
are now common ; at all events, the plan 
Mrs. Dempster took, when she had reached 
a part of London she judged sufficiently dis- 
tant for her purpose, was to go from shop to 
shop inquiring after a situation. But she 
met with no prospect of success, and at last, 
greatly in need of rest and refreshment, went 
into a small coffee shop. The woman who 
kept it was taken by her appearance, her 
manners, and her evident trouble, and, hap- 
pening to have heard of a lady who wanted 
a nurse, gave her the address. She went at 


WHAT IT MEANT. 


189 


once, and applied for the place. The lady 
was much pleased with her, and agreed to 
take her, provided she received a satisfactory 
character of her. For such a demand Mrs 
Dempster was unprepared ; she had nevei 
thought what reference she could give, and, 
her resources for deception easily exhausted, 
gave, driven to extremity, the name and 
address of her mother. So met the extremes 
of loss and salvation ! She returned to the 
coffee shop, and the lady wrote at once to 
the address of the young woman’s late mis- 
tress, as she supposed. 

The kindness of her new friend was not 
exhausted ; she gave her a share of her own 
bed that night. Mrs. Dempster had now but 
two shillings, which she offered her, promis- 
ing to pay her the rest out of the first wages 
she received. But the good woman would 
take no more than one of them, and that in 
full payment of what she owed her, and 
Mrs. Dempster left the shop in tears, to linger 
about the neighbourhood until the hour 
should arrive at which the lady had told her 
to call again. Apparently she must have 
cherished the hope that her mother, divining 
her extremity, would give her the character 
she could honestly claim. But as she drew 
near the door which she hoped would prove 
a refuge, her mother was approaching it also, 
and at the turning of a corner they ran into 
each other’s arms. The elderly lady had a 
hackney coach waiting for her in the next 


190 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


street, and Mrs. Dempster, too tired to resist, 
got into it at once at her mother’s desire. 
Ere they reached the mother’s house, which, 
as I have said, was a long way from Mr. 
Dempster’s, the daughter told everything, 
and the mother had perceived more than the 
daughter could tell : her eyes had revealed 
that all was not right behind them. She 
soothed her as none but a mother can, easily 
persuading her she would make everything 
right, and undertaking herself to pay the 
money owing to the butcher. But it was 
soon evident that for the present there must 
be no suggestion of her going hack to her 
husband ; for, imagining from something, 
that her mother was taking her to him, she 
jumped up and had all but opened the door 
of the cab when her mother succeeded in 
mastering her. As soon as she was per- 
suaded that such had never been the in- 
tention, she was quiet. When they reached 
the house she was easily induced to go to 
bed at once. 

Her mother lived in a very humble way, 
with one servant, a trustworthy woman. To 
her she confided the whole story, and with 
her consulted as to what had better be done. 
Between them they resolved to keep her, for 
a while at least, in retirement and silence. 
To this conclusion they came on the following 
grounds : First, the daughter’s terror and the 
mother’s own fear of Mr. Dempster ; next, it 
must be confessed, the resentment of both 


WHAT IT MEANT. 


191 


mistress and servant because of his rudeness 
when he came to inquire after her ; third, the 
evident condition of the poor creature’s mind; 
and last, the longing of the two women to 
have her to themselves, that they might 
nurse and cosset her to their hearts’ content. 

They were to have more of this indulgence, 
however, than, for her sake, they would have 
desired, for before morning she was very ill. 
She had brain fever, in fact, and they had 
their hands full, especially as they desired to 
take every precaution to prevent the neigh- 
bourhood from knowing there was any one 
but themselves in the house. 

It was a severe attack, but she passed the 
crisis favourably, and began to recover. One 
morning, after a quieter night than usual, 
she called her mother, and told her she had 
had a strange dream — that she had a baby 
somewhere, but could not find him, and was 
wandering about looking for him. 

“ Wasn't it a curious dream, mamma ? ” 
she said. “ I wish it were a true one. I 
knew exactly what my baby was like, and 
went into house after house full of children, 
sure that I could pick him out of thousands. 
I was just going up to the door of the 
Foundling Hospital to look for him there 
when I woke.” 

As she ceased, a strange trouble passed 
like a cloud over her forehead and eyes, and 
her hand, worn almost transparent by the 
fever followed it over forehead and eves. 


192 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


She seemed trying to recall something for- 
gotten. But her mother thought it better to 
say nothing. 

Each of the two nights following she had 
the same dream. 

‘‘ Three times, mother,” she said. “ I am 
not superstitious, as you know, but I can’t 
help feeling as if it must mean something. 
I don’t know what to make of it else — except 
it he that I haven’t got over the fever yet. 
And, indeed, I am afraid my head is not quite 
right, for I can’t be sure sometimes, such a 
hold has my dream of me, that 1 haven't got 
a baby somewhere about the world. Give 
me your hand, mother, and sing to me.” 

Still her mother thought it more prudent 
to say nothing, and do what she could to 
divert her thoughts ; for she judged it must 
be better to let her brain come right, as it 
were, of itself. 

In the middle of the next night she woke 
her with a cry. 

“ 0, mother, mother ! I know it all now. 
I am not out of my mind any more. How I 
came here I cannot tell — but I know I have 
a husband and a baby at Hackney — and — 
oh, such a horrible roll of butcher’s bills ! ” 

“ Yes, yes, my dear ! I know all about it,” 
answered her mother. “ But never mind ; 
you can pay them all yourself now, for I 
heard only yesterday that your aunt Lucy 
is dead, and has left you the hundred pounds 
she promised you twenty years ago.” 


WHAT CAME OF IT. 


193 


Oh, bless her ! ” cried Mrs. Dempster, 
springing out of bed, much to the dismay of 
her mother, who boded a return of the fever. 
“ I must go home to my baby at once. 
But tell me all about it, mamma. How did 
I come here ? I seem to remember being in 
a carriage with you, and that is the last I 
know.” 

Then, upon condition that she got into bed 
at once, and promised not to move until she 
gave her leave, her mother consented to tell 
her all she knew. She listened in silence, 
with face flushed and eyes glowing, but 
drank a cooling draught, lay down again, 
and at daybreak was fast asleep. When she 
awoke she was herself again. 


CHAPTER V. 

WHAT CAME OF IT. 

Meantime, things were going, as they should, 
in rather a dull fashion with Duncan Dempster. 
His chariot wheels were gone, and he drove 
heavily. The weather was good ; he seldom 
failed of the box-seat on the omnibus ; a ray 
of light, the first he had ever seen there, 
visited his table, reflected from a new window 
on the opposite side of a court into the heart 
of his dismal back office; and best of all, 
business was better than usual. Yet was 


104 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


Dempster not cheerful. He was not, indeed, 
a man an acquaintance would ever have 
thought of calling cheerful ; but in grays 
there are gradations ; and however differently 
a man’s barometer may be set from those of 
other people, it has its ups and downs, its fair 
weather and foul. But not yet had he an 
idea how much his mental equilibrium had 
been dependent upon the dim consciousness 
of having that quiet uninterested wife in the 
comfortable house at Hackney. It had been 
stronger than it seemed, the spidery, invisible 
line connecting that office and that house, 
along which had run twice a day the hard 
dumpling that dwelt in Mr. Dempster’s 
bosom. Vaguely connected with that home 
after all must have been that endless care- 
ful gathering of treasure in the city ; for 
now, though he could no more stop making 
money than he could stop breathing, it had 
not the same interest as formerly. Indeed, 
he had less interest than before in keeping 
his lungs themselves going. But he kept on 
doing everything as usual. 

Not one of the men he met ever said a word 
to him about his wife. The general impres- 
sion was that she had left him for preferable 
society, and no one wondered at her throwing 
aside such “ a dry old stick,” whom even the 
devoted slaves of business contemned as 
having nothing in him but business. 

A further change was, however, in pro- 
gress within him. The first sign of it was 


WHAT CAME OF IT. 


195 


that he began to doubt whether his wife had 
indeed been false to him — had forsaken him 
in any other company than that of Death. 
But there was one great difficulty in the way 
of the conclusion. It was impossible for him 
to imagine suicide as proceeding from any 
cause but insanity, and what could have pro- 
duced the disorder in one who had no cares 
or anxieties, everything she wanted, and 
nothing to trouble her, a devoted husband, 
and a happy home ? Yet the mere idea made 
him think more pitifully, and so more 
tenderly of her than before. It had not yet 
occurred to him to consider whether he might 
not have had something to do with her con- 
duct or condition. Blame was a thing he 
had never made acquaintance with — least of 
all in the form of self-blame. To himself he 
was simply all right — the poised centre of 
things capable of righteous judgment on 
every one else. But it must not be forgotten 
how little he knew about his own affairs at 
all ; his was a very different condition from 
that of one who had closed his eyes and 
hardened his heart to suspicions concerning 
himself. His eyes had never yet been opened 
to anything but the order of things in the 
money world — its laws, its penalties, its re- 
wards — those he did understand. But ap- 
parently he was worth troubling. A slow 
dissatisfaction was now preying upon him — 
a sense of want — of not having something 
he once had, a vague discomfort, growing 


196 


THE BUTCHER’S BILLS. 


restless. This feeling was no doubt the 
worse that the birth of the child had brought 
such a sudden rush of fresh interest into his 
occupation, which doubt concerning that 
birth had again so suddenly checked ; but 
even if the child should prove after all his 
own, a supposition he was now willing to 
admit as possibly a true one, he could never 
without his mother feel any enthusiasm about 
him, even such enthusiasm as might be 
allowed to a man who knew money from 
moonshine, and common sense from hysterics. 
Yet once and again, about this time, the 
nurse coming into the room after a few 
minutes’ absence, found him bending over 
the sleeping infant, and, as she described 
him, “ looking as if he would have cried if 
he had only known how.” 

One frosty evening in late autumn the 
forsaken husband came from London — I 
doubt if he would now have said “ home ” — 
as usual, on the top of the omnibus. His 
was a tough nature physically, as well as 
morally, and if he had found himself inside 
an omnibus he would have thought he was 
going to die. The sun was down. A green 
hue rose from the horizon half-way to the 
zenith, but a pale yellow lingered over the 
vanished sun, like the gold at the bottom 
of a chrysolite. The stars were twinkling 
small and sharp in the azure overhead. A 
cold wind blew in little gusts, now from 


WHAT CAME OF IT. 


197 


steadily along. The horses’ hoofs rang lond 
on the hard road. The night got hold of 
him : it was at this season, and on nights 
like these, that he had haunted the house 
of Lucy’s father, doing his best to persuade 
her to make him, as he said, a happy man. 
It now seemed as if then, and then only, he 
had been a happy man. Certainly, of all 
his life, it was the time when he came 
nearest to having a peep out of the upper 
windows of the house of life. He had been 
a dweller in the lower regions, a hewer of 
wood to the god of the cellar ; and after his 
marriage, he had gone straight down again 
to the temple of the earthy god — to a 
worship whose god and temple and treasure 
caves will one day drop suddenly from under 
the votary’s feet, and leave him dangling in 
the air without even a pocket about him — 
without even his banker’s book to show for 
his respectability. 

The night, I say, recalled the lovely season 
of his courtship, and again, in the mirror of 
loss, he caught a glimpse of things beyond 
him. Ah, if only that time and its hopes 
had remained with him ! How different 
things would have been now ! If Lucy had 
proved what he thought her! — remained 
what she seemed — the gentle, complaisant, 
yielding lady he imagined her, promising 
him a life of bliss 1 Alas, she would not 
even keep account of five pounds a week 
to please him 1 He never thought whether 


198 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


he, on his part, might not have, in some 
measure, come short of her expectations in a 
husband ; whether she, the more lovely in 
inward design and outward fashion, might 
not have indulged yet more exquisite dreams 
of bliss which, by devotion to his ideal of 
life, he had done his part in disappointing. 
He only thought what a foolishness it all 
was ; that thus it would go on to the end of 
the book ; that youth after youth would have 
his turn of such a wooing, and such a disap- 
pointment. Sunsets, indeed ! The suns of 
man’s happiness never did anything but set ! 
Out of money even — and who could say 
there was any poetry in that ? — there was 
not half the satisfaction to be got that one 
expected. It was all a mess of expectations 
and disappointments mashed up together — 
nothing more. That was the world — on a 
lair judgment. 

Such were his reflections till the driver 
pulled up for him to get down at his own 
gate, ^s he got down the said driver 
glanced up curiously at the row of windows 
on the first floor, and as soon as Mr. Demp- 
ster’s back was turned, pointed to them with 
the butt-end of his whip, and nodded queerly 
to the gentleman who sat on his other side. 

“ That’s more’n I’ve seen this six weeks,” 
he said. “ There’s something more’n common 
up this evenin’, sir.” 

There was light in the drawing-room — 
that was all the wonder ; but at those 


WHAT CAME OP IT. 


199 


windows Mr. Dempster himself looked so 
fixedly that he had nearly stumbled up his 
own door-steps. 

He carried a latch-key now, for he did 
not care to stand at the door till the boy 
answered the ^ bell ; people’s eyes, as they 
passed, seemed to burn holes in the back of 
his coat. 

He opened the street door quietly, and went 
straight up the stair to the drawing-room. 
Perhaps he thought to detect some liberty 
taken by his servants. He was a little earlier 
than usual. He opened that door, took two 
steps into the room, and stood arrested, 
motionless. With his shabby hat on his 
head, his shabby greatcoat on his back — for 
he grudged every penny spent on his clothes 
— his arms hanging down by his sides, and 
his knees bent, ready to tremble, he looked 
not a little out of keeping in the soft-lighted, 
dainty, delicate-hued drawing-room. Could 
he believe his eyes ? The light of a large 
lamp was centred upon a gracious figure in 
white — his wife, just as he used to see her 
before he married her ! That was the way 
her hair would break loose as she ran down 
the stair to meet him ! — only then there was 
no baby in her lap for it to fall over like a 
torrent of unlighted water over a white 
stone ! It was a lovely sight. 

He had stood but a moment when she 
looked up and saw him. She started, but 
gave no cry louder than a little moan. 


200 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


Instantly she rose. Turning, she laid the 
baby on the sofa, and flitted to him like a 
wraith. Arrived where he stood yet motion- 
less, she fell upon her knees and clasped 
his. He was far too bewildered now to ask 
himself what husbands did in such circum- 
stances, and stood like a block. 

“ Husband ! husband ! ” she cried, “ forgive 
me.” With one hand she hid her face, 
although it was bent to the ground, and 
with the other held up to him a bit of paper. 
He took it from the thin white fingers ; 
it might explain something — help him out 
of this bewilderment, half nightmare, half 
heavenly vision. He opened it. Nothing 
but a hundred-pound note ! The familiar 
sight of bank paper, however, seemed to 
restore his speech. 

“ What does this mean, Lucy ? Upon my 
word ! Permit me to say ” 

He was growing angry. 

“It is to pay the butcher,” she said, with 
a faltering voice. 

“ Damn the butcher ! ” he cried. “ I hope 
you’ve got something else to say to me! 
Where have you been all this time ? ” 

“ At my mother’s. I’ve had a brain fever, 
and been out of my mind. It was all about 
the butcher’s bill.” 

Dempster stared. Perhaps he could not 
understand how a woman who would not 
keep accounts should be to such a degree 
troubled at the result of her neglect. 


WHAT CAME OF IT. 


201 


‘‘ Look at me, if you don’t believe me,” 
she cried, and as she spoke she rose and 
lifted her face to his. 

He gazed at it for a moment — pale, thin, 
and worn ; and out of it shone the beautiful 
eyes, larger than before, but shimmering 
uncertain like the stars of a humid night, 
although they looked straight into his. 

Something queer was suddenly the matter 
with his throat — something he had never 
felt before — a constriction such as, had he 
been superstitious, he might have taken for 
the prologue to a rope. Then the thought 
came — what a brute he must be that his 
wife should have been afraid to tell him 
her trouble ! Thereupon he tried to speak, 
but his throat was irresponsive to his will. 
Eve’s apple kept sliding up and down in it, 
and would not let the words out. He had 
never been so served by members of his own 
body in his life before ! It was positive re- 
bellion, and would get him into trouble with 
bis wife. There it was ! Didn’t he say so ? 

“ Can’t you forgive me, Mr. Dempster ? ” 
she said, and the voice was so sweet and so 
sad ! “ It is my own money. Aunt Lucy 

is dead, and left it me. I think it will be 
enough to pay all my debts ; and I promise 
you — I do promise you that I will set down 
every halfpenny after this. Do try me once 
again — for baby's sake.” 

This last was a sudden thought. She 
turned and ran to the sofa. Dempster stood 


202 


THE butcher’s BILLS. 


where he was, fighting the strange uncom- 
fortable feeling in his throat. It would not 
yield a jot. Was he going to die suddenly 
of choking ? Was it a judgment upon him ? 
Diphtheria, perhaps ! It was much about 
in the City ! 

She was back, and holding up to him their 
sleeping child. 

The poor fellow was not half the brute 
he looked — only he could not tell what to 
do with that confounded lump in his throat ! 
He dared not try to speak, for it only 
choked him the more. He put his arms 
round them both, and pressed them to his 
bosom. Then the lump in his throat melted 
and ran out at his eyes, and all doubt 
vanished like a mist before the sun. But 
he never knew that he had wept. His wife 
did, and that was enough. 

The next morning, for the first time in 
his life, he lost the eight o’clock omnibus. 

The following Monday morning she 
brought her week’s account to him. He 
turned from it testily, but she insisted on 
his going over it. There was not the mis- 
take of a halfpenny. He went to town with 
a smile in his heart, and that night brought 
her home a cheque for ten pounds instead of 
five. 

One day, in the middle of the same week, 
he came upon her sitting over the little blue- 
and-red-ruled book with a troubled counte* 
nance. She took no notice of his entrance. 


WHAT CAME OF IT. 203 

“ Do leave those accounts,” he said, “ and 
attend to me.” 

She shook her head impatiently, and made 
him no other answer. One moment more, 
however, and she started up, threw her arms 
about his neck, and cried triumyjhantly, 

“It’s buttons ! — fourpence-haifpenny I paid 
for buttons I ” 


POET IN A STOEM. 


“ Papa,” said my sister Effie, one evening as 
we all sat about the drawing-room fire. One 
after another, as nothing followed, we turned 
our eyes upon her. There she sat, still silent, 
embroidering the corner of a cambric hand- 
kerchief, apparently unaware that she had 
spoken. 

It was a very cold night in the beginning 
of winter. My father had come home early, 
and we had dined early that we might have 
a long evening together, for it was my 
father’s and mother’s wedding-day, and we 
always kept it as the homeliest of holidays. 
My father was seated in an easy-chair by the 
chimney corner, with a jug of Burgundy near 
him, and my mother sat by his side, now and 
then taking a sip out of his glass. 

Effie was now nearly nineteen ; the rest of 
us were younger. What she was thinking 
about we did not know then, though we 
could all guess now. Suddenly she looked 
up, and seeing all eyes fixed upon her, be- 
came either aware or suspicious, and blushed 
rosy red. 


PORT IN A STORM. 205 

‘‘ You spoke to me, EfEe. What was it, 
my dear ? ” 

‘‘ 0 yes, papa. I wanted to ask you 
whether you wouldn’t tell us, to-night, the 
story about how you ” 

“ Well, my love ? ” 

‘‘ — About how you ” 

“ I am listening, my dear.” 

“ I mean, about mamma and you.” 

“ Yes, yes. About how I got your mamma 
for a mother to you. Yes. I paid a dozen 
of port for her.” 

We all and each exclaimed Papal and my 
mother laughed. 

“ Tell us all about it,” was the general cry. 

“ Well, I will,” answered my father. “ I 
must begin at the beginning, though.” 

And, filling his glass with Burgundy, he 
began. 

“ As far back as I can remember, I lived 
with my father in an old manor-house in the 
country. It did not belong to my father, 
but to an elder brother of his, who at that 
time was captain of a seventy-four. He 
loved the sea more than his life ; and, as yet 
apparently, had loved his ship better than 
any woman. At least he was not married. 

‘‘ My mother had been dead for some 
years, and my father was now in very 
delicate health. He had never been strong, 
and since my mother’s death, I believe, 
though I was too young to notice it, he had 
pined away. I am not going to tell you 


206 


PORT IN A STORM. 


anything about him just now, because it does 
not belong to my story. When I was about 
five years old, as nearly as I can judge, the 
doctors advised him to leave England. The 
bouse was put into the hands of an agent to 
let — at least, so I suppose ; and he took me 
with him to Madeira, where he died. I was 
brought home by his servant, and by my 
uncle’s directions, sent to a boarding-school ; 
from there to Eton, and from there to 
Oxford. 

“ Before I had finished my studies, my 
uncle had been an admiral for some time. 
The year before I left Oxford, he married 
Lady Georgiana Thornbury, a widow lady, 
with one daughter. Thereupon he bade fare- 
well to the sea, though I dare say he did not 
like the parting, and retired with his bride 
to the house where he was born — the same 
house I told you I was born in, which had 
been in the family for many generations, and 
which your cousin now lives in. 

“It was late in the autumn when they 
arrived at Culverwood. They were no 
sooner settled than my uncle wrote to me, 
inviting me to spend Christmas-tide with 
them at the old place. And here you may 
see that my story has arrived at its be- 
ginning. 

“ It was with strange feelings that I entered 
the house. It looked so old-fashioned, and 
stately, and grand, to eyes which had been 
accustomed to all the modern commonplaces ! 


PORT m A STORM. 


207 


Yet the shadowy recollections which hung 
about it gave an air of homeliness to the 
place, which, along with the grandeur, oc- 
casioned a sense of rare delight. For what 
can be better than to feel that you are in 
stately company, and at the same time per- 
fectly at home in it ? I am grateful to this 
day for the lesson I had from the sense of 
which I have spoken — that of mingled awe 
and tenderness in the aspect of the old hall 
as I entered it for the first time after fifteen 
years, having left it a mere child. 

“ I was cordially received by my old uncle 
and my new aunt. But the moment Kate 
Thornbury entered I lost my heart, and have 
never found it again to this day. I get on 
wonderfully well without it, though, for I 
have got the loan of a far better one till I 
find my own, which, therefore, I hope I never 
shall.” 

My father glanced at my mother as he said 
this, and she returned his look in a way 
which I can now interpret as a quiet satisfied 
confidence. But the tears came in EfiSe’s 
eyes. She had trouble before long, poor girl! 
But it is not her story I have to tell. — My 
father went on : 

Your mother was prettier then than she 
is now, but not so beautiful; beautiful enough, 
though, to make me think there never had 
been or could again be anything so beautiful. 
She met me kindly, and I met her awk- 
wardly.” 


208 


PORT IN A STORM. 


‘‘ You made me feel that I had no business 
there,” said my mother, speaking for the 
first time in the course of the story. 

“ See there, girls,” said my father. You 
are always so confident in first impressions, 
and instinctive judgment! I was awkward 
because, as I said, I fell in love with your 
mother the moment I saw her; and she 
thought I regarded her as an intruder into 
the old family precincts. 

“ I will not follow the story of the days. 
I was very happy, except when I felt too 
keenly how unworthy I was of Kate Thorn- 
bury; not that she meant to make me feel 
it, for she was never other than kind ; but 
she was such that I could not help feeling it. 
I gathered courage, however, and before 
three days were over, I began to tell her all 
my slowly reviving memories of the place, 
with my childish adventures associated with 
this and that room or outhouse or spot in the 
grounds ; for the longer I was in the place 
the more my old associations with it revived, 
till I was quite astonished to find how much 
of my history in connection with Culverwood 
had been thoroughly imprinted on my 
memory. She never showed, at least, that 
she was weary of my stories ; which, how- 
ever interesting to me, must have been tire- 
some to any one who did not sympathize 
with what I felt towards my old nest. From 
room to room we rambled, talking or silent ; 
and nothing could have given me a better 


PORT m A STORM. 


209 


cliance, I believe, with a heart like your 
mother’s. I think it was not long before 
she began to like me, at least, and liking 
had every opportunity of growing into some- 
thing stronger, if only she too did not come 
to the conclusion that I was unworthy of 
her. 

‘‘ My uncle received me like the jolly old 
tar that he was — welcomed me to the old 
ship — hoped we should make many a voyage 
together — and that I would take the run of 
the craft — all but in one thing. 

“ ‘ You see, my boy,’ he said, ‘ I married 
above my station, and I don’t want my wife’s 
friends to say that I laid alongside of her 
to get hold of her daughter’s fortune. No, 
no, my boy ; your old uncle has too much 
salt water in him to do a dog’s trick like 
that. So you take care of yourself — that’s 
all. She might turn the head of a wiser 
man than ever came out of our family.’ 

“ I did not tell my uncle that his advice 
was already too late ; for that, though it was 
not an hour since I had first seen her, my 
head was so far turned already, that the only 
way to get it right again, was to go on 
turning it in the same direction ; though, no 
doubt, there was a danger of overhauling the 
screw. The old gentleman never referred to 
the matter again, nor took any notice of our 
increasing intimacy ; so that I sometimes 
doubt even now if he could have been in 
earnest in the very simple warning he gave 


210 


PORT IN A STORM. 


me. Fortunately, Lady Georgiana liked me 
— at least I thought she did, and that gave 
me courage.” 

“ That’s all nonsense, my dear,” said 
my mother. ‘‘ Mamma was nearly as fond 
of you as I was ; but you never wanted 
courage.” 

“I knew better than to show my cowardice, 
I dare say,” returned my father. “ But,” he 
continued, ‘‘ things grew worse and worse, 
till I was certain I should kill myself, or 
go straight out of my mind, if your mother 
would not have me. So it went on for a few 
days, and Christmas was at hand. 

“ The admiral had invited several old friends 
to come and spend the Christmas week with 
him. Now you must remember that, al- 
though you look on me as an old-fashioned 
fogie ” 

“ Oh, papa ! ” we all interrupted ; but he 
went on. 

Yet my old uncle was an older-fashioned 
fogie, and his friends were much the same as 
himself. Now, I am fond of a glass of port, 
though I dare not take it, and must content 
myself with Burgundy. Uncle Bob would 
have called Burgundy pig-wash. He could 
not do without his port, though he was a 
moderate enough man, as customs were. 
Fancy, then, his dismay when, on ques- 
tioning his butler, an old coxen of his own, 
and after going down to inspect in person, 
he found that there was scarcely more than 


PORT IN A STORM. 


211 


a dozen of port in tlie wine-cellar. He 
turned white with dismay, and, till he had 
brought the blood back to his countenance 
by swearing, he was something awful to 
behold in the dim light of the tallow candle 
old Jacob held in his tattooed fist. I will 
not repeat the words he used ; fortunately, 
they are out of fashion amongst gentlemen, 
although ladies, I understand, are beginning 
to revive the custom, now old, and always 
ugly. Jacob reminded his honour that he 
would not have more put down till he had 
got a proper cellar built, for the one there 
was, he had said, was not fit to put anything 
but dead men in. Thereupon, after abusing 
Jacob for not reminding him of the neces- 
sities of the coming season, he turned to me, 
and began, certainly not to swear at his own 
father, but to expostulate sideways with the 
absent shade for not having provided a 
decent cellar before his departure from this 
world of dinners and wine, hinting that it 
was somewhat selfish, and very inconsiderate 
of the welfare of those who were to come 
after him. Havirig a little exhausted his 
indignation, he came up, and wrote the most 
peremptory order to his wine-merchant, in 
Liverpool, to let him have thirty dozen of 
port before Christmas Day, even if he had to 
send it by post-chaise. I took the letter to 
the post myself, for the old man would trust 
nobody but me, and indeed would have pre- 
ferred taking it himself ; but in winter he 


212 


PORT IN A STORM. 


was always lame from the effects of a bruise 
he had received from a falling spar in the 
battle of Aboukir. 

“ That night I remember well. I lay in 
bed wondering whether I might venture to 
say a word, or even to give a hint to your 
mother that there was a word that pined to 
be said if it might. All at once I heard a 
whine of the wind in the old chimney. How 
well I knew that whine ! For my kind aunt 
had taken the trouble to find out from me 
what room I had occupied as a boy, and, by 
the third night I spent there, she had got 
it ready for me. I jumped out of bed, and 
found that the snow was falling fast and 
thick. I jumped into bed again, and began 
wondering what my uncle would do if the 
port did not arrive. And then I thought 
that, if the snow went on falling as it did, 
and if the wind rose any higher, it might 
turn out that the roads through the hilly 
part of Yorkshire in which Culver wood lay, 
might very well be blocked up. 

“ The north wind doth blow, 

And we shall have snow, 

And what will my uncle do then, poor thing ? 

He’ll run for his port, 

But he will run short, 

And have too much water to drink, poor thing ! 

‘‘ With the influences of the chamber of 
my childhood crowding upon me, I kept 
repeating the travestied rhyme to myself, 
till I fell asleep. 


PORT IN A STORM. 


213 


Now, boys and girls, if I were writing a 
novel, I should like to make yon, somehow or 
other, put together the facts — that I was in 
the room I have mentioned ; that I had been 
in the cellar with my uncle for the first time 
that evening ; that I had seen my uncle’s 
distress, and heard his reflections upon his 
father. I may add that I was not myself, 
even then, so indifferent to the merits of a 
good glass of port as to be unable to enter 
into my uncle’s dismay, and that of his guests 
at last, if they should find that the snow- 
storm had actually closed up the sweet ap- 
proaches of the expected port. If I was 
personally indifferent to the matter, I fear it 
is to be attributed to your mother, and not to 
myself.” 

“ Nonsense ! ” interposed my mother once 
more. ‘‘ I never knew such a man for 
making little of himself and much of other 
people. You never drank a glass too much 
port in your life.” 

“ That’s why I’m so fond of it, my dear,” 
returned my father. “ I declare you make me 
quite discontented with my pig-wash here. 

“ That night I had a dream. 

‘‘ The next day the visitors began to arrive. 
Before the evening after, they had all come. 
There were five of them — three tars and two 
land-crabs, as they called each other when 
they got jolly, which, by-the-way, they 
would not have done long without me. 

“ My uncle’s anxiety visibly increased. 


214 


PORT IN A STORM. 


Each guest, as he came down to breakfast, 
received each morning a more constrained 
greeting. — I beg your pardon, ladies ; I 
forgot to mention that my aunt had lady- 
visitors, of course. But the fact is, it is only 
the port-drinking visitors in whom my story 
is interested, always excepted your mother. 

These ladies my admiral uncle greeted 
with something even approaching to servility. 
I understood him well enough. He instinct- 
ively sought to make a party to protect him 
when the awful secret of his cellar should be 
found out. But for two preliminary days or 
so, his resources would serve ; for he had 
plenty of excellent claret and Madeira — stuff 
I don’t know much about — and both Jacob 
and himself condescended to manoeuvre a 
little. 

‘‘ The wine did not arrive. But the morn- 
ing of Christmas Eve did. I was sitting in 
my room, trying to write a song for Kate — • 

that’s your mother, my dears ” 

“ I know, papa,” said Effie, as if she were 
very knowing to know that. 

“ when my uncle came into the room, 

looking like Sintram with Death and the 
Other One after him — that’s the nonsense 
you read to me the other day, isn’t it, EfiSe ? ” 
“Not nonsense, dear papa,” remonstrated 
Effie; and I loved her for saying it, for 
surely that is not nonsense. 

“ I didn’t mean it,” said my father ; and 
turning to my mother, added: “It must be 


PORT IN A STORM, 


215 


your fault, my dear, that my children are so 
serious that they always take a joke for 
earnest. However, it was no joke with my 
uncle. If he didn’t look like Sintram he 
looked like t’other one. 

“ ‘ The roads are frozen — I mean snowed 
up,’ he said. ‘ There’s just one bottle of port 
left, and what Captain Calker will say — I 
dare say I know, hut I’d rather not. Damn 
this weather! — God forgive me! — that’s not 
right — but it is trying — ain’t it, my boy ? ’ 

“ ‘ What will you give me for a dozen of 
port, uncle ? ’ was all my answer. 

‘‘ ‘ Give you ? I’ll give you Culverwood, 
you rogue.’ 

“ ‘ Done,’ I cried. 

‘ That is,’ stammered my uncle, ‘ that is,’ 
and he reddened like the funnel of one of his 
hated steamers, ‘ that is, you know, always 
provided, you know. It wouldn’t be fair to 
Lady Georgiana, now, would it ? I put it to 
yourself — if she took the trouble, you know. 
You understand me, my boy ? ’ 

“ ‘ That’s of course, uncle,’ I said. 

‘ Ah ! I see you’re a gentleman like your 
father, not to trip a man when he stumbles,’ 
said my uncle. For such was the dear old 
man’s sense of honour, that he was actually 
uncomfortable about the hasty promise he 
had made without first specifying the ex- 
ception. The exception, you know, has 
Culverwood at the present fipur, and right 
welcome he is. 


216 


PORT IN A STORM. 


“ ‘ Of course, uncle,’ I said — ‘ between 
gentlemen, you know. Still, I want my 
joke out, too. What will you give me for 
a dozen of port to tide you over Christmas 
Day?\ 

“ ‘ Give you, my boy ? I’ll give you * 

“ But here he checked himself, as one that 
had been burned already. 

“ ‘ Bah ! ’ he said, turning his back, and 
going towards the door ; ‘ what’s the use of 
joking about serious affairs like this ? ’ 

“ And so he left the room. And I let him 
go. For I had heard that the road from 
Liverpool was impassable, the wind and snow 
having continued every day since that night 
of which I told you. Meantime, I had never 
been able to summon the courage to say one 
word to your mother — I beg her pardon, I 
mean Miss Thornbury. 

“ Christmas Day arrived. My uncle was 
awful to behold. His friends were evidently 
anxious about him. They thought he was 
ill. There was such a hesitation about him, 
like a shark with a bait, and such a flurry, 
like a whale in his last agonies. He had a 
horrible secret which he dared not tell, and 
which yet would come out of its grave at the 
appointed hour. 

“ Down in the kitchen the roast beef and 
turkey were meeting their deserts. Up in 
the store-room — for Lady Georgiana was not 
above housekeeping, any more than her 
daughter — the ladies of the house were doing 


PORT IN A STORM. 


217 


their part ; and I was oscillating between my 
uncle and his niece, making myself amazingly 
useful now to one and now to the other. The 
turkey and the beef were on the table, nay, 
they had been well eaten, before I felt that 
my moment was come. Outside, the wind 
was howling, and driving the snow with 
soft pats against the window-panes. Eager- 
eyed I watched Greneral Fortescue, who 
despised sherry or Madeira even during 
dinner, and would no more touch champagne 
than he would eau sucree, but drank port 
after fish or with cheese indiscriminately — 
with eager eyes I watched how the last bottle 
dwindled out its fading life in the clear 
decanter. Glass after glass was supplied to 
General Fortescue by the fearless cockswain, 
who, if he might have had his choice, would 
rather have boarded a Frenchman than 
waited for what was to follow. My uncle 
scarcely ate at all, and the only thing that 
stopped his face from growing longer with 
the removal of every dish was that nothing 
but death could have made it longer than it 
was already. It was my interest to let 
matters go as far as they might up to a 
certain point, beyond which it was not my 
interest to let them go, if I could help it. 
At the same time I was curious to know 
how my uncle would announce — confess the 
terrible fact that in his house, on Christmas 
Day, having invited his oldest friends to 
share with him the festivities of the season. 


218 


PORT IN A STORM. 


there was not one bottle more of port to 
had. 

“ I waited till the last moment — till I 
fancied the admiral was opening his mouth, 
like a fish in despair, to make his confession. 
He had not even dared to make a confidante 
of his wife in such an awful dilemma. Then 
I pretended to have dropped my table-napkin 
behind my chair, and rising to seek it, stole 
round behind my uncle, and whispered in his 
ear : 

“ ‘ What will you give me for a dozen of 
port now, uncle ? ’ 

“ ‘ Bah ! ’ he said, ^ I’m at the gratings ; 
don’t torture me.’ 

“ ‘ I’m in earnest, uncle.’ 

“He looked round at me with a sudden 
flash of bewildered hope in his eye. In the 
last agony he was capable of believing in a 
miracle. But he made me no reply. He 
only stared. 

“ ‘ Will you give me Kate ? I want Kate,’ 
I whispered. 

“ ‘ I will, my boy. That is, if she’ll have 
you. That is, [ mean to say, if you produce 
the true tawny.’ 

“ ‘ Of course, uncle ; honour bright — as 
port in a storm,’ I answered, trembling in 
my shoes and everything else I had on, for I 
was not more than three parts confident in 
the result. 

“The gentlemen beside Kate happening at 
the moment to be occupied, each with the 


PORT IN A STORM. 


219 


lady on his other side, I went behind her, 
and whispered to her as I had whispered to 
my nncle, though not exactly in the same 
terms. Perhaps I had got a little courage 
from the champagne I had drunk ; perhaps 
the presence of the company gave me a kind 
of mesmeric strength ; perhaps the excite- 
ment of the whole venture kept me up ; 
perhaps Kate herself gave me courage, like a 
goddess of old, in some way I did not under- 
stand. At all events I said to her : 

“ ‘ Kate,’ — we had got so far even then — 
‘ my uncle hasn’t another bottle of port in 
his cellar. Consider what a state Greneral 
Fortescue will be in soon. He’ll be tipsy for 
want of it. Will you come and help me to 
find a bottle or two ? ’ 

“ She rose at once, with a white-rose blush 
— so delicate I don’t believe any one saw it 
but myself. But the shadow of a stray ring- 
let could not fall on her cheek without my 
seeing it. 

When we got into the hall, the wind was 
roaring loud, and the few lights were flicker- 
ing and waving gustily with alternate light 
and shade across the old portraits which 1 
had known so well as a child — for I used to 
think what each would say first, if he or she 
came down out of the frame and spoke to me. 

“ I stopped, and taking Kate’s hand, I 
said — 

“‘I daren’t let you come farther, Kate, 
before I tell you another thing : my uncle has 


220 


PORT IN A STORM. 


promised, if I find him a dozen of port — yon 
must have seen what a state the poor man is 
in — to let me say something to you — I sup- 
pose he meant your mamma, but I prefer 
saying it to you, if you will let me. Will 
you come and help me to find the port ? ’ 

‘‘ She said nothing, but took up a candle 
that was on a table in the hall, and stood 
waiting. I ventured to look at her. Her 
face was now celestial rosy red, and I could 
not doubt that she had understood me. She 
looked so beautiful that I stood staring at her 
without moving. What the servants could 
have been about that not one of them crossed 
the hall, I can’t think. 

‘‘ At last Kate laughed and said — ‘ Well ? ’ 
I started, and I dare say took my turn at 
blushing. At least I did not know what to 
say. I had forgotten all about the guests 
inside. ‘ Where’s the port ? ’ said Kate. I 
caught hold of her hand again and kissed 
it.” 

“ You needn’t be quite so minute in your 
account, my dear,” said my mother, smiling. 

‘‘ I will be more careful in future, my 
love,” returned my father. 

“ ‘ What do you want me to do ? ’ said 
Kate. 

‘‘ ‘ Only to hold the candle for me,’ I 
answered, restored to my seven senses at 
last ; and, taking it from her, I led the way, 
and she followed, till we had passed through 
the kitchen and reached the cellar-stairs. 


PORT IN A STORM. 221 

These were steep and awkward, and she let 
me help her down.” 

“ Now, Edward ! ” said my mother. 

“Yes, yes, my love, I understand,” re- 
turned my father. 

“Up to this time your mother had asked 
no questions ; but when we stood in a vast, 
low cellar, which we had made several turns 
to reach, and I gave her the candle, and took 
up a great crowbar which lay on the floor, 
she said at last — 

“ ‘ Edward, are you going to bury me 
alive ? or what are you going to do ? ’ 

“ ‘ I’m going to dig you out,’ I said, for 
I was nearly beside myself with joy, as I 
struck the crowbar like a battering-ram into 
the wall. You can fancy, John, that I didn’t 
work the worse that Kate was holding the 
candle for me. 

“ Yery soon, though with great effort, I 
had dislodged a brick, and the next blow I 
gave into the hole sent back a dull echo. 
I was right ! 

“ I worked now like a madman, and, in a 
very few minutes more, I had dislodged the 
whole of the brick-thick wall which filled up 
an archway of stone and curtained an ancient 
door in the lock of which the key now 
showed itself. It had been well greased, and 
I turned it without much difficulty. 

“ I took the candle from Kate, and led her 
into a spacious region of sawdust, cobweb, 
and wine-fungus. 


222 


PORT IN A STORM. 


^ There, Kate ! ’ I cried, in delight. 

‘‘ ‘ But,’ said Kate, ‘ will the wine be good ? ’ 

“ ‘ General Fortescue will answer you 
that,’ I returned, exultantly. ‘ Now come, 
and hold the light again while I find the 
port-bin.’ 

‘‘ I soon found not one, but several well- 
filled port-bins. Which to choose I couM 
not tell. I must chance that. Kate carried 
a bottle and the candle, and I carried two 
bottles very carefully. We put them down 
in the kitchen with orders they should not 
be touched. We had soon carried the dozen 
to the hall-table by the dining-room door. 

‘‘ When at length, with Jacob chuckling 
and rubbing his hands behind us, we entered 
the dining-room, Kate and I, for Kate would 
not part with her share in the joyful busi- 
ness, loaded with a level bottle in each hand, 
which we carefully erected on the sideboard, • 
I presume, from the stare of the company, 
that we presented a rather remarkable ap- 
pearance — Kate in her white muslin, and I 
in my best clothes, covered with brick-dust, 
and cobwebs, and lime. But we could not 
be half so amusing to them as they were to 
us. There they sat with the dessert before 
them but no wine-decanters forthcoming. 
How long they had sat thus, I have no idea. 

If you think your mamma has, you may ask 
her. Captain Calker and General Fortescue 
looked positively white about the gills. My 
uncle, clinging to the last hope, despairingly, 


PORT IN A STORM. 


223 


had sat still and said nothing, and the guests 
could not understand the awful delay. Even 
Lady Greorgiana had begun to fear a mutiny 
in the kitchen, or something equally awful. 
But to see the flash that passed across my 
uncle’s face, when he saw us appear with 
ported arms ! He immediately began to pre- 
tend that nothing had been the matter. 

“ ‘ What the deuce has kept you, Ned, my 
boy ? ’ he said. ‘ Fair Hebe,’ he went on, 
‘ I beg your pardon. Jacob, you can go on 
decanting. It was very careless of you to 
forget it. Meantime, Hebe, bring that bottle 
to Greneral Jupiter, there. He’s got a cork- 
screw in the tail of his robe, or I’m mistaken.’ 

“ Out came General 'Fortescue’s corkscrew. 
I was trembling once more with anxiety. 
The cork gave the genuine plop ; the bottle 
was lowered ; glug, glug, glug, came from 
> its beneficent throat, and out flowed some- 
thing tawny as a lion’s mane. The general 
lifted it lazily to his lips, saluting his nose on 
the way. 

“ ‘ Fifteen ! by Gyeove ! ’ he cried. * Well, 
Admiral, this was worth waiting for ! Take 
care how you decant that, Jacob — on peril of 
your life.’ 

‘‘ My uncle was triumphant. He winkec 
hard at me not to tell. Kate and I retired, 
she to change her dress, I to get mine well 
brushed, and my hands washed. By the time 
I returned to the dining-room, no one had 
any questions to ask. For Kate, the ladies 


224 


PORT m A STORM. 


had gone to the drawing-room before she was 
ready, and I believe she had some difificulty 
in keeping my uncle’s counsel. But she did. 
— Need I say that was the happiest Christmas 
I ever spent ? ” 

“ But how did you find the cellar, papa ? ” 
asked Effie. 

‘‘ Where are your brains, Effie ? Don’t 
you remember I told you that I had a 
dream ? ” 

“Yes. But you don’t mean to say the 
existence of that wine-cellar was revealed to 
you in a dream ? ” 

“ But I do, indeed. I had seen the wine- 
cellar built up just before we left for Madeira. 
It was my father’s plan for securing the wine 
when the house was let. And very well it 
turned out for the wine, and me too. I had 
forgotten all about it. Everything had con- 
spired to bring it to my memory, but had 
just failed of success. I had fallen asleep 
under all the influences I told you of — 
influences from the region of my childhood. 
They operated still when I was asleep, and, 
all other distracting influences being re- 
moved, at length roused in my sleeping 
brain the memory of what I had seen. In 
the morning I remembered not my dream 
only, but the event of which my dream was 
a reproduction. Still, I was under con- 
siderable doubt about the place, and in this 
I followed the dream only, as near as I could 
judge. 


PORT m A STORM. 


225 


^^The admiral kept his word, and inter- 
posed no difficulties between Kate and me. 
Not that, to tell the truth, I was ever very 
anxious about that rock ahead ; but it was 
very possible that his fastidious honour ot* 
pride might have occasioned a considerable 
interference with our happiness for a time. 
As it turned out, he could not leave me 
Culverwood, and I regretted the fact as little 
as he did himself. His gratitude to me was, 
however, excessive, assuming occasionally 
ludicrous outbursts of thankfulness. I do not 
believe he could have been more grateful if 
I had saved his ship and its whole crew. 
For his hospitality was at stake. Kind old 
man ! ” 

Here ended my father’s story, with a 
light sigh, a gaze into the bright coals, a kiss 
of my mother’s hand which he held in his, 
and another glass of Burgundy. 




IF I HAD A FATHER. 

A DBAMA. 


ACT I. 

Scene. — A Sculptors studio. Arthur Ger- 
VAISE working at a. clay figure and hum- 
ming a tune. A knock. 

Ger. Come in. {Throws a wet cloth over 
the clay. Enter Warren by the door commu- 
nicating with the house.) Ah, Warren ! How 
do you do ? 

War. How are you, Gervaise? I’m de- 
lighted to see you once more. I have but 
just heard of your return. 

Ger. I’ve been home but a fortnight. I 
was just thinking of you. 

War. I was certain I should find you at 
work. 

Ger. You see my work can go on by any 
light. It is more independent than yours. 

War. T wish it weren’t, then. 

Ger. Why ? 

War. Because there would be a chance of 
our getting you out of your den sometimes. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 227 

Gei\ Like any other wild beast when the 
dark falls — eh ? 

War. Just so. 

Ger. And where the good ? 

War. Why shouldn’t you roar a little now 
and then like other honest lions ? 

Ger. I doubt if the roaring lions do much 
beyond roaring. 

War. And I doubt whether the lion that 
won’t even whisk his tail, will get food 
enough shoved through his bars to make it 
worth his while to keep a cage in London. 

Ger. I certainly shall not make use of 
myself to recommend my work. 

War. What is it now ? 

Ger. Oh, nothing ! — only a little fancy of 
my own. 

War. There again ! The moment I set 
foot in your study, you throw the sheet over 
your clay, and when I ask you what you are 
working at — “Oh — a little fancy of my own!” 

Ger. I couldn’t tell it was you coming. 

War. Let me see what you’ve been doing, 
then. 

Ger. Oh, she’s a mere Lot’s-wife as yet ! 

War. {approaching the figure). Of course, 
of course ! 1 understand all that. 

Ger. (laying his hand on his arm). Excuse 
me : I would rather not show it. 

War. I beg your pardon. — I couldn’t be- 
lieve you really meant it. 

Ger. I’ll show you the mould if you like. 

War. I don’t know what you mean by 


228 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


that : you would never throw a wet sheet 
ovei a cast ! (Ger. lifts a 'painting from the 
floor' and sets it on an easel. War. regards it 
for a few moments in silence.) Ah ! by Jove, 
Gervaise ! some one sent you down the 
wrong turn : you ought to have been a 
painter. What a sky ! And what a sea ! 
Those blues and greens — rich as a peacock’s 
feather-eyes ! Superb ! A tropical night ! 
The dolphin at its last gasp in the west, 
and all above, an abyss of blue, at the bottom 
of which the stars lie like gems in the mine- 
shaft of the darkness ! 

Ger. You seem to have taken the wrong 
turn, Warren ! You ought to have been a poet. 

War. Such a thing as that puts the slang 
out of a fellow’s head. 

Ger. I’m glad you like it. I do myself, 
1 hough it falls short of my intent sadly 
enough. 

War. But I don’t for the life of me see 
what this has to do with that. You said 
something about a mould. 

Ger. I will tell you what I meant. Every 
individual aspect of nature looks to me as if 
about to give birth to a human form, em- 
bodying that of which itself only dreams. In 
this way landscape-painting is, in my eyes, 
the mother of sculpture. That Apollo is of 
the summer dawn ; that Aphrodite of the 
moonlit sea ; this picture represents the 
mother of my Psyche. 

War. Under the sheet there ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


229 


Ger, Yes. You shall see her some day ; 
but to show your work too soon, is to un- 
cork your champagne before dinner. 

War, Well, you’ve spoiled my picture. I 
shall go home and scrape my canvas to the 
bone. 

Ger, On second thoughts, I will show you 
my Psyche. {Uncovers the clay. War. stands 
in admiration. Enter Waterfield by same 
door.) 

Wat. Ah, Warren ! here you are before 
me ! Mr. Gervaise, I hope I see you well. 

War. Mr. Waterfield — an old friend of 
yours, Gervaise, I believe. 

Ger. I cannot appropriate the honour. 

Wat. I was twice in your studio at Rome, 
but it’s six months ago, Mr. Gervaise. Ha ! 
{using his eye-glass) What a charming figure ! 

A Psyche! Wings suggested by Yery 

skilful 1 Contour lovely 1 Altogether an- 
tique in pose and expression I — Is she a 
commission ? 

Ger. No. 

Wat. Then I beg you will consider her 
one. 

Ger. Excuse me ; I never work on com- 
mission — at least never in this kind. A 
bust or two I have done. 

Wat. By Jove ! — I should like to see your 
model! — This is perfect. Are you going to 
carve her ? 

Ger. Possibly. 

Wat. Uncommissioned? 


230 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Ger, If at all. 

Wat, Well, I can’t call it running any 
risk. What lines ! — You will let me drop in 
some day when j^ou’ve got your model here ? 

Ger. Impossible. 

Wat. You don’t mean ? 

Ger. I had no model. 

Wat. No model ? Ha ! ha ! — You must 
excuse me ! (GtER. takes up the wet sheet.) I 
understand. Reasons. A little mystery en- 
hances — eh ? — is convenient too — balks intru- 
sion — throws the drapery over the mignon- 
ette. I understand. (Ger. covers the clay.) 
Oh ! pray don’t carry out my figure. That 
is a damper now ! 

Ger. I am not fond of acting the showman. 
You must excuse me : I am busy. 

Wat. Ah well! — some other time — when 
you’ve got on with her a bit. Good morn- 
ing. Ta, ta, Warren. 

Ger. Good morning. This way, if you 
please. {Shows him out hy the door to the 
street.) How did the fellow find his way 
here ? 

War. I am the culprit, I’m sorry to say. 
He asked me for your address, and I gave 
it him. 

Ger. How long have you known him ? 

War. A month or two. 

Ger. Don’t bring him here again. 

War. Don’t say I brought him. I didn’t 
do that. But I’m afraid you’ve not seen the 
last of him. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


231 


Ger, Oh yes, I have ! Old Martha would 
let in anybody, but IVe got a man now. — 
William ! 

Enter Col. Gervaise dressed as a servant. 

You didn’t see the gentleman just gone, I’m 
afraid, William ? 

Col G. No, sir.^ 

Ger. Don’t let in any one calling himself 
Waterfield. 

Col G. No, sir. 

Ger, I’m going out with Mr. Warren. I 
shall be back shortly. 

Col. G. Very well, sir. Exit into the house, 

Ger, (to W ar.) I can’t touch clay again till 
I get that fellow out of my head. 

War, Come along, then. 

Exeunt Ger, and War. 

Re-enter Col. G. polishing a hoot. Regards 
it with dissatisfaction. 

Col, G, Confound the thing ! I wish it 
were a scabbard. When I think I’m getting 
it all right — one rub more and it’s gone dull 
again ! 

The house-door opens slowly^ and Thomas 
peeps cautiously in. 

Th. What sort of a plaze be this, mais- 
ter ? 

Col, G, You ought to have asked that out- 
side. How did you get in ? 


232 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Th. By th’ dur-hole. Iv yo leave th’ dur 
oppen, th’ dogs’ll coom in. 

Col. G. I must speak to Martha again. 
She will leave the street-door open! — Well, 
you needn’t look so frightened. It ain’t a 
robbers’ cave. 

Th. That be more’n aw kna.w — not for 
sartin sure, maister. Nobory mun keawnt 
upon nobory up to Lonnon, they tells mo. 
But iv a gentleman axes mo into his heawse, 
aw’m noan beawn to be afeard. Aw’ll coom 
in, for mayhap yo can help mo. It be a 
coorous plaze. What dun yo mak here ? 

Col. G. What would you think now? 

Th. It looks to mo like a mason’s shed — a 
greight one. 

Col. G. You’re not so far wrong. 

Th. (advancing). It do look a queer plaze. 
Aw be noan so sure abeawt it. But they 
wonnot coot mo throat beout warnin’. Aw’ll 
bother noan. (Sits down on the dais and 
loipes his face.) Well, aw be a’most weary. 

Col. 6^. Is there anything I can do for you ? 

Th. Nay, aw donnot know ; but beout aw 
get somebory to help mo, aw dunnot think 
aw’ll coom to th’ end in haste. Aw’re a 
lookin’ for summut aw’ve lost, mon. 

Col. G. Did you come all the way from 
Lancashire to look for it ? 

Th. Eh, lad 1 aw thowt thae’rt beawn to 
know wheer aw coom fro 1 

Col. G. Anybody could tell that, the first 
word you spoke. I mean no offence 


IF I HAD A Fi\THER. 


233 


Th, {loohing disappointed). Well, noan’s 
ta’en. But thae dunnot say thae’s ne’er been 
to Lancashire thisel’ ? 

Col. G. No, I don’t say that : I’ve been to 
Lancashire several times. 

Th. Wheer to ? 

Col. Gr. Why, Manchester. 

Th. That’ s noan ov it. 

Col. G. And Lancaster. 

Th. Tut ! tut ! That’s noan of it, nayther. 

Col. G. And Liverpool. I was once there 
for a whole week. 

Th. Nay, nay. Noather o’ those plazes. 
Fur away off ’em. 

Col. G. But what does it matter where I 
have or haven’t been ? 

Th. Mun aw tell tho a,^ain ? Aw’ve lost 
summut, aw tell tho. Didsto ne’er hear 
tell ov th’ owd woman ’at lost her shillin’ ? 
Hoo couldn’t sit her deawn beawt hoo 
feawnd it ! Yon’s me. {Hides his face in 
his hands.) 

Col. G. Ah! now I begin to guess ! {aside). 
— You don’t mean you’ve lost your 

Th. {starting up and grasping his stick with 
both hands). Aw do mane aw’ve lost mo 
yung lass ; and aw dunnot say thae’s feawnd 
her, but aw do say thae knows wheer hoo is. 
Aw do. Theighur 1 Nea then 1 

Col. G. What on earth makes you think 
that ? I don’t know what you’re after. 

Th. Thae knows well enough. Thae 
knowed what aw’d lost afoor aw tou’d tho 


234 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Yo’ be denyin’ your own name. Thae 
knows. Aw’ll tay tho afore the police, beout 
thou gie her oop. Aw wull. 

CoL G. What story have you to tell the 
police then ? They’ll want to know. 

Th. Story saysto? The dule’s i’ th’ mon! 
Didn’t aw seigh th’ mon ’at stealed her away 
goo into this heawse not mich over hauve an 
hour ago ? — Aw seigh him wi’ mo own eighes. 

CoL G, Why didn’t you speak to him ? 

Th, He poppit in at th’ same dur, and 
there aw’ve been a-watching ever since. 
Aw’ve not took my eighes off ov it. He’s 
somewheeres now in this same heawse. 

Col, G, He may have been out in the 
morning (aside ), — But you see there are more 
doors than one to the place. There is a back 
door ; and there is a door out into the street. 

Th, Eigh ! eigh ! Th’ t’one has to do wi’ 
th’ t’other — have it ? Three dur-holes to one 
shed ! That looks bad ! 

Col, G, He’s not here, whoever it was. 
There’s not a man but myself in the place. 

Th, Hea am aw to know yo’re not playin’ 
a marlock wi’ mo ? He’ll be oop i’ th’ heawse 
theer. Aw rnun go look (going). 

Col, G. (preventing him). And how am I 
to know you’re not a housebreaker ? 

Th. Dun yo think an owd mon like mosel’ 
would be of mich use for sich wark as that, 
mon? 

Col. G. The more fit for a spy, though, to 
see what might be made of it. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


235 


7%. Eh, mon ! Dun they do sich things as 
yon ? But aw’m seechin’ nothin’, man nor 
meawse, that donnot belung me. Aw tell yo 
+rue. Grie mo mo Mattie, and aw’ll trouble yo 
no moor. Aw winnot — if yo’ll give mo back 
mo Mattie. {Comes close up to him and lays 
his hand on his arm,) Be yo a feyther, mon ? 

Col G, Yes. 

Th, Ov a pratty yung lass ? 

Col, G, Well, no. I have but a son. 

Th. Then thae winnot help mo ? 

Col, G, I shall be very glad to help you, if 
you will tell me how. 

Th, Tell yor maister ’at Mattie’s owd 
feyther’s coom a’ the gait fro Each da to fot 
her whoam, and aw’ll be much obleeged to 
him iv he’ll let her goo beout lunger delay, 
for her mother wants her to whoam : hoo’s 
but poorly. Tell yor maister that. 

Col, G, But I don’t believe my master 
knows anything about her. 

Th, Aw’re tollin’ tho, aw seigh’ th’ mon 
goo into this heawse but a feow minutes 
agoo ? 

Col, G, You’ve mistaken somebody for him. 

Th, Well, aw’m beawn to tell tho moore. 
Twothre days ago, aw seigh mo chylt coom 
eawt ov this same dur — aw mane th’ heawse- 
dur, yon. 

Col, G, Are you sure of that ? 

Th, Sure as death. Aw seigh her back. 

Col, G, Her back ! Who could be sure of 
a back ? 


236 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Th, By tV maslnns ! dosto think I diinnot 
know mo Mattie’s back ? I seign her coom 
eawt o’ that dur, aw tell tho ! 

Col. G. Why didn’t you speak to her ? 

Th. Aw co’d. 

Col. G. And she didn’t answer ? 

Th. Aw didn’t co’ leawd. Aw’re not will- 
in’ to have ony mak ov a din. 

Col. G. But you followed her surely ? 

Th. Aw did ; but aw’re noan so good at 
walkin’ as aw wur when aw coom ; th’ stwons 
ha’ blistered mo fet. An it’re the edge o’ 
dark like. Aw connot seigh weel at neet, 
wi o’ th’ lamps ; an afoor aw geet oop wi’ 
her, boo's reawnd th’ nook, and gwon fro mo 
seet. 

Col. G. There are ten thousands girls in 
London you might take for your own under 
such circumstances — not seeing more than 
the backs of them. 

Th. Ten theawsand girls like mo Mattie, 
saysto ? — wi’her greight eighes and her lung 
yure ? — Puh ! 

Col. G. But you’ve just said you didn’t see 
her face ! 

Th. Dunnot aw know what th’ face ov mo 
chylt be like, beout seein’ ov it ? Aw’m noan 
ov a Inmp-yed. Nobory as seigh her once 
wouldn’t know her again. 

Col. G. {aside). He’s a lunatic ! — I don’t 
see what I can do for you, old fellow. 

Th. {rising). And aw met ha’ known it 
beoiit axin’ ! O’reet ! Aw’re a greight foo’ ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


237 


But aw’re beawn to coom in : aw lung’d to 
goo through th’ same dur wi’ mo Mattie. 
Good day, sir. It be like maister, like mon ! 
God’s curse upon o’ sich ! ( Turm^ his hack. 

After a raoment turns again.) Noa. Aw 
winnot say that; for mo Mattie’s sake aw 
winnot say that. God forgie you ! {going hy 
the house). 

Col. G. This way, please ! {opening the 
street-door). 

Th. Aw see. Aw’m not to have a chance 
ov seein’ oather Mattie or th’ mon. Exit. 

Col. G. resumes his hoot absently. Re-enter 
Thomas, shaking his fist. 

Th. But aw tell tho, aw’ll stick to th’ place 
day and neet, aw wull. Aw wull. Aw wull. 

Col. G. Come back to-morrow. 

Th. Coom back, saysto ? Aw’ll not goo 
away {growing fierce). Wilto gie mo mo 
Mattie ? Aw’m noan beawn to ston here so 
mich lunger. Wilto gie mo mo Mattie? 

Col. G. I cannot give you what I haven’t 
got. 

Th. Aw’ll break thi yed, thou villain ! 
{threatening him with his stick). Eh, Mattie ! 
Mattie ! to loe sich a mon’s maister more’n 
me ! I would dey fur thee, Mattie. Exit. 

Col. G. It’s all a mistake, of course. There 
are plenty of young men — but my Arthur’s 
none of such. I cannot believe it of him. 
The daughter ! If I could find her^ she would 


238 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


settle the question. (7^ begins to grow darh.') 
I must help the old man to find her. He’s 
sure to come back. Arthur does not look the 
least like it. But — {polishes vigorously), I 
cannot get this boot to look like a gentle- 
man’s. I wish I had taken a lesson or two 
first. I’ll get hold of a shoeblack, and make 
him come for a morning or two. No, he 
does not look like it. There he comes. {Goes 
on polishing.) 


Enter GtER. 

Ger, William ! 

Col. G. (turning). Yes, sir. 

Ger. Light the gas. Any one called ? 

Col. G. Yes, sir. 

Ger. Who? 

Col. G. I don’t know, sir. (Lighting the 
gas.) 

Ger. You should have asked his name. 
(Stands before the clay, contemplating zV.) 

Col. G. I’m sorry I forgot, sir. It was 
only an old man from the country — after his 
daughter, he said. 

Ger. Came to offer his daughter, or him- 
self perhaps. (Begins to work at the figure.) 

Col. G. (watching him stealthily). He 
looked a respectable old party — from Lan- 
cashire, he said. 

Ger. I dare say. You will have many 
such callers. Take the address. Models, you 
know. 

Col. G. If he calls again, sir ? 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 239 

Ger, Ask him to leave his address, I say. 

CoL G. But he told me you knew her. 

Ger, I^ossibly. I had a good many models 
before I left. But it’s of no consequence ; I 
don’t want any at present. 

Col, G, He seemed in a great way, sir — 
and swore. I couldn’t make him out. 

Ger, Ah ! hm ! 

Col. G, He says he saw her come out of 
the house. 

Ger. Has there been any girl here ? Have 
you seen any about ? 

Col. G, No, sir. 

Ger, My aunt had a dressmaker to meet 
her here the other evening. I have had no 
model since I came back. 

Col, G. The man was in a sad taking 
about her, sir. I didn’t know what to make 
of it. There seemed some truth — something 
suspicious. 

Ger, Perhaps my aunt can throw some 
light upon it. (Col. Gr. lingers,') That will 
do. {Exit Col. G-.) How oddly the man 
behaves ! A sun-stroke in India, perhaps. 
Or he may have had a knock on the head. 
I must keep my eye on him. {Stops working^ 
steps backward, and gazes at the Psyche,) She 
is growing very like some one ! Who can it 
be ? She knows she is puzzling me, the 
beauty ! See how she is keeping back a 
smile ! She knows if she lets one smile out, 
her whole face will follow it through the 
clay. How strange the half-lights of memory 


240 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


are! You know and you don’t know — both 
at once. Like a bat in the twilight you are 
sure of it, and the same moment it is no- 
where. Who is my Psyche like ? — The fore- 
head above the eyebrow, and round by the 
temple ? The half-playful, half-sorrowful 
curve of the lip ? The hope in the lifted 
eyelid ? There is more there than ever I 
put there. Some power has been shaping my 
ends. By heaven, I have it 1 — No — yes — it 
is — it is Constance — momently dawning out 
of the clay 1 What does this mean ? She 
never gave me a sitting — at least, she has 
not done so for the last ten years — yet here 
she is —she, and no other 1 1 never thought 

she was beautiful. When she came with my 
aunt the other day though, I did fancy I saw 
a new soul dawning through the lovely face. 
Here it is — the same soul breaking through 
the clay of my Psyche 1 — I will give just one 
touch to the corner of the mouth. 

Gives a few touches, then st ps hack again 
and contemplates the figure. Turns 
away and walks up and down. The 
light darkens to slow plaintive music., 
which lasts for a minute. Then the 
morning begins to dawn, gleaming blue 
upon the statues and casts, and reveal- 
ing Ger. seated before his Psyche, 
gazing at her. He rises, and exit. 
Enter Col. G. and looks about. 

Col. G. I don’t know what to make of it 1 
Or rather I’m afraid I do know what to make 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


241 


of it ! It looks bad. He’s not been in bed 
all night. But it shows he has some con- 
science left — and that’s a comfort. 

Enter Mrs. peeping round cautiously. 

Col. G. What, Clara ! you here so early ! 

Mrs. C, Well, you know, brother, you’re 
so fond of mystery ! 

Col. G. It’s very kind of you to come ! 
But we must be very careful ; I can’t tell 
when my master may be home. 

Mrs. C. Has he been out all night, then ? 

Col. G. Oh no; he's just gone. 

Mrs. C. I never knew him such an early 
bird. I made sure he was safe in bed for 
a couple of hours yet. But I do trust, 
Walter, you have had enough of this fooling, 
and are prepared to act like a rational man 
and a gentleman. 

Col. G. On the contrary, Clara, with my 
usual obstinacy, I am more determined than 
ever that my boy shall not know me, until, 
as I told you, I have rendered him such ser- 
vice as may prove me not altogether un- 
worthy to be his father. Twenty years of 
neglect will be hard to surmount. 

Mrs. C. But mere menial service cannot 
discharge the least portion of your obliga- 
tions. As his father alone can you really 
serve him. 

Col. G. You persist in misunderstanding 
me. This is not the service I mean. I scorn 


242 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


the fancy. This is only the means, as I told 
yon plainly before, of finding out how T may 
serve him— of learning what he really needs 
— or most desires. If I fail in discovering 
how to recommend myself to him, I shall go 
back to India, and content myself with leav- 
ing him a tolerable fortune. 

Mrs, C, How ever a hair-brained fellow 
like you, Walter, could have made such a 
soldier ! — Why don’t you tell your boy you 
love him, and have done with it ? 

Col, G, I will, as soon as I have proof to 
back the assertion. 

Mrs, C, I tell you it is rank pride. 

Col, G, It may be pride, sister ; but it is 
the pride of a repentant thief who puts off 
his confession until he has the money in his 
hand to prove the genuineness of his sorrow. 

Mrs, C, It never was of any use to argue 
with you^ Walter ; you know tliat, or at least 
I know it. So I give up. — I trust you have 
got over your prejudice against his profes- 
sion. It is not my fault. 

Col, G, In truth, I had forgotten the pro- 
fession — as you call it — in watching the 
professor. 

Mrs, C, And has it not once occurred to 
you to ask how he may take such watching ? 

Col, G. By the time he is aware of it, he 
will be ready to understand it. 

Mrs, C, But suppose he should discover 
you before you have thus established your 
position ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


243 


Col, G, I must run the risk. 

Mrs, C, Suppose then you should thus 
find out something he would not have you 
know ? 

Col, G. {hurriedly). Do you imagine his 
servant might know a thing he would hide 
from his father ? 

Mrs, C, I do not, Walter. I can trust 
him. But he might well resent the espionage 
of even his father. You cannot get rid of 
the vile look of the thing. 

Col, G, Again I say, my hoy shall he my 
judge, and my love shall be my plea. In any 
case I shall have to ask his forgiveness. But 
there is his key in the lock ! Run into the 
bouse. 

Exit Mrs. C. Enter GtER., and goes 
straight to the Psyche, 

Col, G, Breakfast is waiting, sir. 

Ger, By and by, William. 

Col, G, You haven’t been in bed, sir ! 

Ger, Well ? What of that? 

Col, G, I hope you’re not ill, sir. 

Ger, Not in the least : I work all night 
sometimes. — You can go. (Col. Gt. lingers, 
with a searching gaze at the Psyche,) — I don't 
want anything. 

Col, G, Pardon me, sir, hut I am sure you 
are ill. You’ve done no work since last night. 

Ger, {with displeasure), I am quite well, 
and wish to he alone. 

Col, G, Mayn’t I go and fetch a doctor, 
sir ? It is better to take things in time. 


244 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Ger» You are troublesome. {Eccit Col. G.) 
— What can the fellow mean ? He looked at 
me so strangely too ! He’s officious — that’s 
all, I dare say. A good sort of man, I do 
think! William! — What is it in the man’s 
face ? — {Enter CoL G.) Is the breakfast 
ready ? 

Col, G, Quite ready, sir. 

Ger. I’m sorry I spoke to you so hastily. 
The fact is 

Col, G, Don’t mention it, sir. Speak as 
you will to me; I shan’t mind it. When 
there’s anything on a man’s conscience — I — I 
— I mean on a man’s mind 

Ger, What do you mean ? 

Col, G, I mean, when there is anything 
there, he can’t well help his temper, sir. 

Ger, I don’t understand you ; but, anyhow, 
you — go too far, William. 

Col, G, I beg yoiir pardon, sir : I forgot 
myself. I do humbly beg your pardon. 
Shall I make some fresh coffee, sir? It’s 
not cold — only it’s stood too long. 

Ger, The coffee will do well enough. {Exit 
Col. G.) — Is she so beautiful ? {turning to the 
Psyche) — Is there a likeness ? — I see it. — 
Nonsense ! A mere chance confluence of the 
ideal and the actual. — Even then the chance 
must mean something. Such a mere chance 
would indeed be a strange one ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


245 


Enter Constance. 

Oil, my heart ! here she comes ! ray Psyche 
herself! — Well, Constance 1 

Con. Oh, Arthur, I am so glad IVe found 
you 1 I want to talk to you about something. 
I know you don’t care much about me now, 
but I must tell you, for it would be wrong 
not. 

Ger. {aside). How beautiful she is 1 What 
can she have to tell me about ? It cannot be 
— it shall not be — . Sit down, won’t you ? 
{offering her a chair.) 

Con. No. You sit there {'pointing to the 
dais), and 1 will sit here {placing herself on 
the lower step). It was here I used to sit so 
often when I was a little girl. Why can’t 
one keep little ? I was always with you 
then 1 {Sighs.) 

Ger. It IS not my fault, Constance. 

Con. Oh no 1 I suppose it can’t be. Only 
I don’t see why. Oh, Arthur, where should 
I be but for you 1 I saw the old place yester- 
day. How dreadful and yet how dear it was 1 

Ger. Who took you there ? 

Con. Nobody. I went alone. 

Ger. It was hardly safe. — I don’t like your 
going out alone, Constance. 

Con. Why, Arthur 1 I used to know every 
court and alley about Shoreditch better than 
I know Berkeley Square now 1 

Ger. But what made you go there ? 


246 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Con. I went to find a dressmaker who has 
been working for my aunt, and lost my way. 
And — would you believe it ? — I was actually 
frightened ! 

Ger. No wonder ! There are rough people 
about there. 

Con. I never used to think them rough 
when I lived among them with my father 
and mother. There must be just as good 
people there as anywhere else. Yet I could 
not help shuddering at the thought of living 
there again ! — How strange it made me feel ! 
You have been my angel, Arthur. What 
would have become of me if you hadn’t taken 
me, I dare not think. 

Ger. I have had my reward, Constance : 
you are happy. 

Con. Not quite. There’s something I want 
to tell you. 

Ger. Tell on, child. 

Con. Oh, thank you ! — that is how you 
used to talk to me. {Hesitates.') 

Ger. {with foreboding) Well, what is it? 

Con. {'pulling the fingers of her gloves) A 
gentleman — you know him — has been — call- 
ing upon aunt — and me. We have seen a 
good deal of him. 

Ger. Who is he ? 

Con. Mr. Waterfield. {Keeps her eyes on 
the floor.) 

Ger. Well? 

Con. He says — he — he — he wants me to 
marry him. — Aunt likes him. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


247 


Ger, And you ? 

Con, I like him too. I don’t think I like 
him enough — I dare say I shall. It is so good 
of him to take poor me ! He is very rich, 
they say. 

Ger. Have you accepted him ? 

Con, I am afraid he thinks so. — Ye — e — s. 
— I hardly know. 

Ger, Haven’t you — been rather — in a 
hurry — Constance ? 

Con, No, indeed ! I haven’t been in a 
hurry at all. He has been a long time 
trying to make me like him. I have been 
too long a burden to Mrs. Clifford. 

Ger, So ! it is her doing, then ! 

Con, You were away, you know. 

Ger, {bitterly) Yes ; too far — chipping 
stones and making mud-pies ! 

Con, I don’t know what you mean by that, 
Arthur. 

Ger, Oh — nothing. I mean that — that — 
Of course if you are engaged to him, then — 

Con, I’m afraid I’ve done very wrong, 
Arthur. If I had thought you would care ! — 
I knew aunt would be pleased ! — she wanted 
me to have him, I knew. — I ought to do 
what I can to please her, — ought I not ? I 
have no right to 

Ger, Surely, surely. Yes, yes ; I under- 
stand. It was not your fault. Only you 

mustn’t marry him, if you . Thank you 

for telling me. 


248 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


before I let him speak to me again. But I 
didn’t think you would care — not much. 

Ger, Yes, yes. 

Con, (looking up with anxiety) Ah ! you 
are vexed with me, Arthur ! I see how wrong 
it was now. I never saw you look like that. 
I am very, very sorry. (Bursts into tears,) 

Ger, No, no, child ! Only it is rather 
sudden, and I w^ant to think about it. Shall 
I send William home with you? 

Con, No, thank you. I have a cab waiting. 
You’re not angry with your little beggar, 
Arthur ? 

Ger, What is there to be angry about, 
child ? 

Con, That I — did anything without asking 
you first. 

Ger, Nonsense ! You couldn’t help it. 
You^q not to blame one bit. 

Con, Oh, yes, I am ! I ought to have 
asked you first. But indeed I did not know 
you would care. Good-bye. — Shall I go at 
once ? 

Ger, Good-bye. (Exit Con., looking hack 
troubled,) Come at last ! Oh fool ! fool \ fool ! 
In love with her at last ! — and too late ! For 
three years I haven’t seen her — have not 
once written to her ! Since I came back I’ve 
seen her just twice, — and now in the very 
hell of love ! The ragged little darling that 
used to lie coiled up there in that corner ! 
If it were my sister, it would be hard to lose 
her so! And to such a fellow as that 1 — not 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


249 


even a gentleman ! How could she take him 
for one ! That does perplex me ! Ah, well ! 
I suppose men have borne such things before, 
and men will bear them again ! I must work ! 
Nothing but work will save me. {^Approaches 
the Psyche^ hut turns from it with a look of de- 
spair and disgust?) What a fool I have been ! 
— Constance ! Constance ! — A brute like that 
to touch one of her fingers ! Grod in heaven ! 
It will drive me mad. {Rushes out, leaving 
the door open.) 

Enter Col. Gervaise. 

Col. G. Gone again ! and without his 
breakfast ! My poor boy ! There’s some- 
thing very wrong with you ! It’s that girl ! 
It must be ! But there’s conscience in him 
yet! — It is all my fault. If I had been a 
father to him, this would never have hap- 
pened. — If he were to marry the girl now ? — 
Only, who can tell but she led him astray ? 
I have known such a thing. {Sits down and 
buries his face in his hands.) 

Enter Waterfield. 

Wat. Is Mr. Gervaise in ? 

Col. G. {rising) No, sir. 

Wat. Tell him I called, will you ? [Exit. 

Col. G. Yes, sir. — Forgot again. Young 
man ; — gentleman or cad ? — don’t know ; 
think the latter. 


250 


IF I HAD A FATHER, 


Enter Thomas. 

Th, Han yo heard speyk ov mo chylt yet, 
sir ? 

CoL G. {starting up). In the name of God, 
I know nothing of your child ; but bring her 
liere, and I will give you a hundred pounds 
— in golden sovereigns. 

T/i. Hea am aw to fot her yere, when I 
dunnot know wheer hoo be, sir ? 

Col. G. That’s your business. Bring her, 
and there will be your money. 

Th. Dun yo think, sir, o’ the gouden 
silverings i’ th’ Bank ov England would put 
a sharper edge on mo oud eighes when they 
look for mo lass ? Eh, mon ! Yo dunnot 
know the heart ov a feyther — ov the feyther 
ov a lass-barn, sir. Han yo kilt and buried 
her, and nea be yo sorry for’t ? I’ hoo be 
dead and gwoan, tell mo, sir, and aw’ll goo 
whoam again, for mo oud lass be main 
lonesome beout mo, and we’ll wait till we 
goo to her, for hoo winnot coom no moor 
to us. 

Col. G. For anything I know, your daugh- 
ter is alive and well. Bring her here, I say, 
and I will make you happy. 

Th. Aw shannot want thee or thi silver- 
ings either to mak mo happy then, maister. 
Iv aw bed a houd o’ mo lass, it’s noan o’ yere 
aw’d be a coomin’ wi’ her. It's reet streight 
whoam to her mother we’d be gooin’, aw’ll 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 251 

be beawn. Nay, nay, mon ! — aw’m noan sich 
a greight foo as yo lak mo for. 

Exit, Col. G-. follows him. Enter, Ger. 
Sits down before the Psyche^ hut without 
looking at her, 

Ger, Oh those fingers ! They are striking 
terrible chords on my heart ! I will conquer 
it. But I will love her. The spear shall fill 
its own wound. To draw it out and die, 
would be uo victory. “ I’ll but lie down and 
bleed awhile, and then I’ll rise and fight 
again.” Brave old Sir Andrew ! 

Enter Col. G-. 

Col, G, I beg your pardon, sir — a young 
man called while you were out. 

Ger, {listlessly), Very well, William. 

Col, G, Is there any message, if he calls 
again, sir ? He said he would. 

Ger, No. (Col. G. lingers,) You can go. 

Col, G, I hope you feel better, sir ? 

Ger, Quite well. 

Col, G, Can I get you anything, sir ? 

Ger, No, thank you; I want nothing. — 
Why do you stay ? 

Col, G, Can’t you think of something I 
c«an do for you, sir ? 

Ger, Fetch that red cloth. 

Col, G, Yes, sir. 

Ger, Throw it over that 

Col, G, This, sir ? 

Ger, No, no — the clay there. Thank you. 
{A knock at the door,) See who that is. 


252 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Col. G. Are you at home, sir ? 

Ger. That depends. Not to Mr. Water- 
field. Oh, my head ! my head ! [Exit Col. G. 

Enter Constance. Ger. starts, hut keeps his 
head leaning on his hand. 

Con. I forgot to say to you, Arthur, . 

But you are ill ! What is the matter, dear 
Arthur ? 

Ger. (without looking up) Nothing — only 
H headache. 

Con. Do come home with me, and let aunt 
and me nurse you. Don’t be vexed with me 
any more. I will do whatever you like. I 
couldn’t go home without seeing you again. 
And now I find you ill ! 

Ger. Not a bit. I am only dreadfully 
busy. I must go out of town. 1 am so busy ! 
I can’t stay in it a moment longer. I have 
so many things to do. 

Con. Mayn’t I come and see you while you 
work? I never used to interrupt you. I 
want so to sit once more in my old place. 
(Draws a stool towards hwi.) 

Ger. No, no — not — not there ! Constance 
used to sit there. William ! 

Con. You frighten me, Arthur ! 

Enter Col. G. 

Ger. Bring a chair, William. 

Constance sits down like a chidden child. 
Exit Col. G. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


253 


Con, I mnst have offended you more 
than I thought, Arthur ! What can I say ? 
It is so stupid to be always saying / am 
sorry, 

Ger, No, no. But some one may call. 

Con, You mean more than that. Will you 
not let me understand ? 

Ger, Your friend Mr. Waterfield called a 
few minutes ago. He will be here again 
presently, I dare say. 

Con, {indifferently). Indeed ! 

Ger, I suppose you appointed — expected — 
to meet him here. 

Con, Arthur ! Do you think I would 
come to you to meet him ? I saw him this 
morning ; I don’t want to see him again. I 
wish you knew him. 

Ger, Why should you want me to know 
him ? 

Con, Because you would do him good. 

Ger, What good does he want done him ? 

Con, He has got beautiful things in him — 
talks well — in bits — arms and feet and faces 
— never anything like — {turning to the Psyche) 

Why have you ? Has she been naughty 

too ? 

Ger, Is it only naughty things that must 
be put out of sight, Constance ? 

Con. Dear Arthur ! you spoke like your 
own self then. 

Ger, {rising hurriedly). Excuse me. I must 
go. It is very rude, but — William! 


254 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


Enter Col. Q-. 

CoL G. Yes, sir. 

Ger, Fetch a hansom directly. 

Col. G. Yes, sir. Exit. 

Con. You do frighten me, Arthur ! I am 
sure you are ill. 

Ger. Not at all. I have an engagement. 

Con. I must go then — must I ? 

Ger. Do not think me unkind ? 

Con. I will not think anything you would 
not have me think. 

Re-enter Col. Gr. 

Col. G. The cab is at the door, sir. 

Ger. Thank you. Then show Miss Lacor- 
dere out. Stay. I will open the door for 
her myself. Exeunt Ger. and Con. 

Col. G. He speaks like one in despair, 
forcing every word ! If he should die ! Oh, 
my God ! 

Re-enter Ger. Walks up and down the room. 

Col. G. Ain’t you going, sir ? 

Ger, No. I have sent the lady in the cab. 

Col. G. Then hadn’t you better lie down, 
sir ? 

Ger, Lie down ! What do you mean ? I’m 
not in the way of lying down except to 
sleep. 

Col. G. And let me go for the doctor, sir ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 255 

Ger, The doctor ! Ha ! ha ha ! — You are 
a soldier, you say ? 

CoL G. Yes, sir. 

Ger, Eight. We’re all soldiers — or ought 
to be. I will put you to your catechism. 
What is a soldier’s first duty ? 

CoL G, Obedience, sir. 

[Ger. sits down and leans his head on his 
hands. Col. G. watches him. 

Ger. Ah ! obedience, is it ? Then turn 
those women out. They will hurt you — may 
kill you ; but you must not mind that. They 
burn, they blister, and they blast, for as 
white as they look ! The hottest is the white 
fire. But duty, old soldier! — obedience, you 
know 1 — Ha 1 ha 1 Oh, my head 1 my head 1 
I believe I am losing my senses, William. I 
was in a bad part of the town this morning. 
I went to see a place I knew long ago. It 
had gone to hell — but the black edges of it 
were left. There was a smell — and I can’t 
get it out of me. Oh, William 1 William 1 
take hold of me. Don’t let them come near 
me. Psyche is laughing at me. I told you 
to throw the red cloth over her. 

Col. G. My poor boy ! 

Ger. Don’t fancy you’re my father, though 1 
I wish you were. But I cannot allow that. — 
Why the devil didn’t you throw the red cloth 
over that butterfly ? She’s sucking the blood 
from my heart. 

Col. G. You said the Psyche, sir! The 
red cloth is over the Psyche, sir. Look. 


256 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


Ger, Yes. Yes. I beg your pardon. Take 
it oif. It is too red. It will scorch her 
wings. It burns my brain. Take it off, I 
say ! (Col. Gr. uncovers the Psyche.) There ! 
I told you ! She’s laughing at me ! Un- 
grateful child ! Pm. not her Cupid. Cover 
her up. Not the red cloth again. It’s too 
hot, I say. I won’t torture her. I am a 
man and I can bear it. She’s a woman and 
she shan’t bear it. 

Sinks hack in his chair. CoL. Gr. lays him 
on the dais., and sits down beside him. 

Col. G. His heart’s all right ! And 
when a fellow’s miserable over his faults, 
there must be some way out of them. — But 
the consequences ? — Ah ! there’s the rub. 

Ger. What’s the matter ? Where am I ? 

Col. G. I must fetch a doctor, sir. You’ve 
been in a faint. 

Ger. Why couldn’t I keep in it ? It was 
very nice : you know nothing — and that’s 
the nicest thing of all. Why is it we can’t 
stop, William ? 

Col. G. I don’t understand you, sir. 

Ger. Stop living, I mean. It’s no use 
killing yourself, for you don’t stop then. At 
least they say you go on living all the same. 
If I thought it did mean stopping, William — 

Gol. C. Do come to your room, sir. 

Ger. I won’t. I’ll stop here. How hot it 
is ! Don’t let anybody in. 

Stretches out his hand. CoL. Gr. holds it. 
He falls asleep. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


257 


Col. G. What shall I do? If he married 
her, he’d be miserable, and make her miser- 
able too. I’ll take her away somewhere. I’ll 
be a father to her ; I’ll tend her as if she 
were his widow. But what confusions would 
follow ! Alas ! alas ! one crime is the mother 
of a thousand miseries ! And now he’s in for 
a fever — typhus, perhaps ! — I must find this 
girl ! — What a sweet creature that Miss 
Lacordere is ! If only he might have her I 
I don’t care what she was. 

Ger. Don’t let them near me, William ! 
They will drive me mad. They think I shall 
love them. I will not. If she comes one 
step nearer, I shall strike her. You Diana ! 
Hecate ! Hell-cat ! — Fire-hearted Chaos is 
burning me to ashes ! My brain is a cinder ! 
Some water, William ! 

Col. G. Flere it is, sir. 

Ger. But just look to Psyche there. Ah . 
she’s off ! There she goes ! melting away in 
the blue, like a dissolving vapour. Bring me 
my field-glass, William. I may catch a 
glimpse of her yet. Make haste. 

Col. G. Pray don’t talk so, sir. Do be 
quiet, or you will make yourself very ill. 
Think what will become of me if 

Ger. What worse would you, be, William ? 
You are a soldier. I must talk. You are all 
wrong about it : it keeps me quiet {holding 
his head with both hands). I should go raving 
mad else {wildly). Give me some water. 
{He drinks eagerly^ then looks slowly round 


258 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


the room,) Now they are gone, and I do 
believe they won’t come again ! I see 
everything — and your face, William. You 
are very good to me — very patient ! I 
should die if it weren’t for you. 

CoL G, I would die for you, sir. 

Ger, Would you ? But perhaps you don’t 
care much for your life. Anybody might 
have my life for the asking. I dare say it’s 
just as good to be dead. — Ah ! there is a toad 
— a toad with a tail ! No ; it’s a toad with a 
slow-worrn after him. Take them away, 
William! — Thank you. — I used to think life 
pleasant, but now — somehow there’s nothing 
in it. She told me the truth about it — Con- 
stance did. Don’t let those women come back. 
What if I should love them, William ! — love 
and hate them both at once! William! 
William ! (A knock at the door,) See who 
that is. Mind you don’t let them in. 

Col, G, Martha is there, sir. 

Ger, She’s but an old woman ; she can’t 
keep them out. They would walk over her. 
All the goddesses have such long legs ! You 
go and look. You’ll easily know them : if 
they’ve got no irises to their eyes, don’t let 
them in, for the love of God, W illiam ! Real 
women have irises to their eyes : those have 
none — those frightful snowy beauties. — And 
yet snow is very nice ! And I’m so hot ! 
There they come again ! Exit Col. G. 


IF 1 HAD A FATHER, 


259 


Enter Mrs. Clifford. 

Ger, Aunt ! aunt ! help me ! There the}’ 
come ! 

Mrs. C. What is it, my Arthur? They shan't 
hurt you. I am here. I will take care of you. 

Ger. Yes, yes, you will ! I am not a bit 
afraid of them now. Do you know them, 
aunt ? I’ll tell you a secret : they are Juno 
and Diana and Venus. — They hate sculptors. 
But I never wronged them. Three white 
women — only, between their fingers and 
behind their knees they are purple — and 
inside their lips, when they smile — and in 
the hollows of their eyes — ugh ! They want 
me to love them ; and they say you are all — 
all of you women — no better than they are. 
I know that is a lie ; for they have no eyelids 
and no irises to their eyes. 

Mrs. C. Dear boy, they shan’t come near 
you. Shall I sing to you, and drive them 
away ? 

Ger. No, don’t. I can’t bear birds in my 
brain. 

Mrs. C. How long have you had this 
headache ? {laying her hand on his forehead.) 

Ger. Only a year or two — since the white 
woman came — that woman {pointing to the 
Psyche). She’s been buried for ages, and 
won’t grow brown. 

Mrs. C. There’s no woman there, Arthur. 

Ger. Of course not. It was an old storj 


260 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


that bothered me. Oh, my head ! my head ! 
— There’s my father standing behind the 
door and won’t come in ! — He could help 
me now, if he would. William! show my 
father in. But he isn’t in the story — so he 
can’t. 

Mrs. C* Bo try to keep yourself quiet, 
Arthur. The doctor will be here in a few 
minutes. 

Ger. He shan’t come here 1 He would 
put the white woman out. She does smell 
earthy, but I won’t part with her. {A knock.) 
What a devil of a noise 1 Why don’t they 
use the knocker ? What’s the use of taking 
a sledge-hammer ? 

Mrs. C. It’s that stupid James ! 

Enter Constance. Mrs. C. goes to meet her, 

Mrs. C. Constance, you go and hurry the 
doctor. I will stay with Arthur. 

Con. Is he verg ill, aunt ? 

Mrs. C. I’m afraid he is. 

Ger. (sitting up). Constance ! Constance I 

Con. Here I am 1 (running to him). 

Ger. Oh, my head 1 I wish I could find 
somewhere to lay it 1 — Sit by me, Constance, 
and let me lay my head on your shoulder — 
for one minute — only one minute. It aches 
so 1 (She sits down hy him. His head sinks on 
her shoulder. Mrs. C. looks annoyed., and exit.) 

Con. Thank you, thank you, dear Arthur ! 
(sobbing). You used to like me ! I could not 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 261 

believe you hated me now. You have for- 
given me ? Dear head ! 

He doses his eyes. Slow plaintive music, 

Ger, (half waking), I can’t read. When 
I get to the bottom of the page, I wonder 
what it was all about. I shall never get 
to Garibaldi ! and if I don’t, I shall never 
get farther. If I could but keep that one 
line away ! It drives me mad, mad. “ He 
took her by the lily-white hand.” — I could 
strangle myself for thinking of such things, 
but they will come ! — I wont go mad. I 
should never get to Garibaldi, and never 
be rid of this red-hot ploughshare ploughing 
up my heart. I will not go mad! I will 
die like a man. 

Con, Arthur 1 Arthur 1 

Ger, God in heaven 1 she is there ! And 
the others are behind her! — Psyche! Psyche! 
Don’t speak to those women ! Come alone, 
and I will tear my heart out and give it you. 
—It is Psyche herself now, and the rest are 
gone ! Psyche — listen. 

Con, It’s only me, Arthur ! your own little 
Constance ! If aunt would but let me stay 
and nurse you ! But I don’t know what’s 
come to her : she’s not like herself at all. 

Ger, Who’s that behind you ? 

Con. Behind me? (looking round). There’s 
nobody behind me. 

Ger, I thought there was somebody behind 
you. William ! — What can have become of 
William ? 


262 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Con, I dare say aunt has sent him some- 
where. 

Ger, Then he’s gone ! he’s gone ! 

Con. You’re not afraid of being left alone 
with me, Arthur ? 

Ger. Oh no ! of course not ? — What can 
have become of William? Don’t you know 
they sent him— not those women, but the 
dead people — to look after me ? He’s a good 
fellow. He said he would die for me. Ha ! 
ha ! ha ! Not much in that — is there ? 

Con. Don’t laugh so, dear Arthur. 

Ger. Well, I won’t. I have something 
to tell you, Constance. I will try to keep 
my senses till I’ve told you. 

Con. Do tell me. I hope I haven’t done 
anything more to vex you. Indeed I am 
sorry. I won’t speak to that man again, if 
you like. I would rather not — if you wish 
it. 

Ger. What right have I to dictate to you, 
my child ? 

Con. Every right. I am yours. I belong to 
you. Nobody owned me when you took me. 

Ger. Don’t talk like that ; you will drive 
me mad. 

Con. Arthur! Arthur! 

Ger. Listen to me, Constance. I am going 
to Garibaldi. He wants soldiers. I must 
not live an idle life any longer. — We must 
part, Constance. — Good-bye, my darling 1 

Con. No, no ; not yet ; we’ll talk about it 
by-and-by. You see I shall have ever so 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 263 

many tilings to make for you before you can 
go ! {smiling^. 

Ger, G-aribaldi can’t wait, Constance — and 
I can’t wait. I shall die it I stop here. 

Con. Oh, Arthur, you are in some trouble, 
and you won’t tell me what it is, so I can’t 
help you ! 

Ger. I shall be killed, I know. I mean to 
be. Will you think of me sometimes ? Give 
me one kiss. I may have a last kiss. 

Con. (weeping^ My heart will break if you 
talk like that, Arthur. I will do anything 
you please. There’s something wrong, dread- 
fully wrong ! And it must be my fault ! — 
Oh ! there’s that man ! {starting up.) He 
shall not come here. 

\Jtuns to the house-door^ and stands listening^ 
with her hand on the key. 


END OF ACT I. 


264 


IF I HAD A I’ATHER. 


ACT IT. 

Scene. — A street in Mayfair. Mrs. Clif- 
ford’s house, A pastrycook's shop. Boys 
looking in at the window. 

Bill. I say, Jim, ain’t it a lot o’ grub ? If 
I wos a pig now, 

Jack. 1 likes to hear Bill a supposin’ of 
liisself. Go it. Bill ! — There ain’t nothink he 
can’t suppose hisself, Jim. — Bein’ as you ain’t 
a pig, Bill, you’ve got yer own trotters, an’ 
yer own tater-trap. 

Bill. Yereupon blue Bobby eccosts me 
with the remark, “ I wants you. Bill ; ” and 
seein’ me too parerlyzed to bolt, he pops me 
in that ’ere jug vithout e’er a handle. 

Jack. Mother kep’ a pig once. 

Jim. What was he like. Jack ? 

Jack. As like nny other pig as ever he 
could look; accep’ that where other pigs is 
black he wor white, an’ where other pigs is 
white he wor black. 

Jim. Did you have the milk in your tea, 
Jack ? 

Jack. Pigs ain’t got no milk, Jim, you 
stupe ! 

Bill. Pigs has milk, Jack, only they don’t 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 265 

give it to coves. — I wish I wos the Lord 
Mayor ! 

Jack, Go it again, Bill. He ought ha’ been 
a beak, Bill ought. What ’ud you do. Bill, 
supposin’ as how you wos the Lord Mayor ? 

Bill, I’d take all the beaks, an’ all the 
peelers, an’ put their own bracelets on ’em, 
an’ feed ’em once a day on scraps o’ wittles to 
bring out the hunger : a cove can’t be hungry 
upon nuffin at all. 

Jim, He gets what mother calls the 
squeamishes. 

Jack, Well, Bill? 

Bill, Well, the werry moment their bellies 
was as long an’ as loose as a o’-clo’-bag of 
a winter’s mornin’, I’d bring ’em all up to 
this ’ere winder, five or six at a time — with 
the darbies on, mind ye 

Jim, And I’m to be there to see, Bill — 
ain’t I ? 

Bill. If you’re good, Jim, an’ don’t forget 
yer prayers. 

Jack, My eye! it’s as good as a penny 
galf 1 Go it. Bill. 

Bill, Then I up an’ addresses ’em : My 
Lords an’ Gen’lernen, ’cos as how ye’re all 
good boys, an’ goes to church, an’ don’t eat 
too many wittles, an’ don’t take off your brace- 
lets when you goes to bed, you shall obswerve 
me eat.” 

Jim, Go it. Bill ! I likes you. Bill. 

Bill, No, Jim ; I must close. The imagi- 
nation is a ’ungry gift, as the cock said when 


266 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


he bolted the pebbles. Let’s sojourn the 
meetin’. 

Jack. Yes ; come along. ’Tain’t a corn- 
fable corner this yere : the wind cuts round 
uncommon sharp. Them pies ain’t good — 
leastways not to look at. 

Bill. They ain’t disgestible. But look ye 
here, Jack and Jim — bearkee, my kids. {Puts 
an arm round the neck of each^ and whispers 
first to one and then to the other.) 

Enter Mattie and Susan. 

Sus. Now, Mattie, we’re close to the bouse, 
an’ I don’t want to be seen with you, for 
she’s mad at me. 

Mat. You must have made her mad, then. 
Sue. 

Sus. She madded me first: what else when 
she wouldn’t believe a word I said ? She’d ha’ 
sworn on the gospel book, we sent the parcel 
up the spout. But she’ll believe you, an’ give 
you something, and then we’ll have a chop ! 

Ma,t. How can you expect that. Sue, when 
1 he work’s lost ? 

Sus. Never mind ; you go and see. 

Mat. I shan’t take it, Susan. I couldn’t. 

Sus. Stuff and nonsense ! I’ll wait you 
round the corner : I don’t like the smell o’ 
them pastry things. 

Eadt. Mattie walks past the window. 

Mat. I don’t like going. It makes me feel 
a thief to be suspected. 


IF I HAP A FATHER. 267 

Bill. Lor ! it’s oiir Mattie ! There’s our 
Mattie ! — Mattie ! Mattie ! 

Mat. Ah, Bill ! you’re there — are you ? 

Bill. Yes, Mattie. It’s a tart-show. You 
walks up and takes yer chice ; — leastways, 
you makes it : somebody else takes it. 

Mat. Wouldn’t you like to take your choice 
sometimes. Bill ? 

Bill. In course I would. 

Mat. Then why don’t you work, and better 
yourself a bit ? 

Bill. Bless you, Mattie! myself is werry 
comf’able. He never complains. 

Mat. You’re hungry sometimes, — ain’t 
you? 

Bill. Most remarkable ’ungry, Mattie — 
this werry moment. Odd you should ask 
now — ain’t it ? 

Mat. You would get plenty to eat if you 
would work. 

Bill. Thank you — I’d rayther not. Them 
as ain’t ’ungry never enj’ys their damaged 
tarts. If I ’m ’appy, vere’s the odds? as the 
cat said to the mouse as wanted to be let off 
the engagement. Why should I work more’n 
any other gen’leman ? 

Mat. A gentleman that don’t work is a 
curse to his neighbours, Bill. 

Bill. Bless you, Mattie ! I ain’t a curse — 
nohow to nobody. I don’t see as you’ve got 
any call to say that, Mattie. I don’t go 
fakin’ dies, or crackin’ cribs — nothin’ o’ the 
sort. An’ I don’t mind doin’ of a odd job, if 


268 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


it is a odd one. Don’t go for to say that 
again, Mattie. 

Mat. I won’t, then, Bill. But just look at 
yourself! — You’re all in rags. 

Bill. Bags is the hairier, as the Skye 
terrier said to the black-an’-tan. — I shouldn’t 
object to a new pair of old trousers, though. 

Mat. Why don’t you have a pair of real 
new ones ? If you would only sweep a 
crossing 

Bill. There ain’t a crossin’ but what’s took. 
Besides, my legs ain’t put together for one 
place all day long. It ain’t to be done, 
Mattie. They can’t do it. 

Mat. There’s the shoe-black business, then. 

Bill. That ain’t so bad, acause you can 
shoulder your box and trudge. But if it’s all 
the same to you, Mattie, I’d rayther enj’y 
life : they say it’s short. 

Mat. But it ain’t the same to me. It’s so 
bad for you to be idle. Bill ! 

Bill. Not as I knows on. I’m tollable 
jolly, so long’s I gets the browns for my bed. 

Mat. Wouldn’t you like a bed with a 
blanket to it ? 

Bill. Well, yes — if it was guv to me. But 
I don’t go in for knocking of yourself about, 
to sleep warm. 

Mat. Well, look here, Bill. It’s all Susan 
and I can do to pay for our room, and get 
a bit of bread and a cup of tea. It ain’t 
enough. — If you were to earn a few pence 
now 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


269 


Bill, Oil golly ! I never thought o’ that. 
What a hass I wur, to be sure ! I’ll go a 
shoe-blackin’ to-morror — I will. 

Mat. Did you ever black a shoe, Bill ? 

Bill. I tried a boot oncet — when Jim wor 
a blackin’ for a day or two. But I made 
nothink on it — nothink worth mentionin’. 
The blackin’ or som’at was wrong. The 
gen’leman said it wur coal-dust, an’ he’d 
slog me, an’ adwised me to go an’ learn my 
trade. 

Mat, And what did you say to that ? 

Bill. Holler’d out Shine yer boots ! ” as 
loud as I could holler. 

Mat. You must try my boots next time 
you come. 

Bill. This wery night, Mattie. I’ll make 
’em shine like plate glass — see then if I don’t. 
But where’ll I get a box and brushes ? 

Mat. You shall have our brushes and my 
footstool. 

Bill, I see ! Turn the stool upside down, 
put the brushes in, and carry it by one leg — 
as drunken Moll does her kid. — Here you are, 
sir ! Black your boots, sir ? — Shine your 
trotters, sir ? \hawling.) 

Mat, That’ll do ; that’ll do. Bill ! Famous ! 
You needn’t do it again {holding her ears). 
Would you like a tart ? 

Bill. Just wouldn’t I, then ! — Shine your 
boooooots ! 

Mat. {laughing). Do hold your tongue, 
Bill. There’s a penny for a tart. 


270 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Bill. Thank you, Mattie. Thank you. 

Exit into the shop. 

Jack and Jim {touching their supposed caps). 
Please, ma’am ! Please, ma’am ! I likes ’em 
too. I likes ’em more ’n Bill. 

Mat. I’m very sorry, but — {feeling in her 
pocket) I’ve got a ha’penny, I believe. No — • 
there’s a penny ! You must share it, you 
know. (^Gives it to Jack. Knocks at Mrs. 
Clifford's door.) 

Jack and Jim. Thank you, ma’am. Thank 
you, ma’am. 

Exit Mattie into Mrs. Clifford’s. 

Jim. Now, Jack, what’s it to be ? 

Jack. I believe I shall spend it in St. 
Martin’s Lane. 

Jim. A ha’p’orth on it’s mine, you know, 
Jack. 

Jack. Well, you do put the stunners on 
me ! 

Jim. She said we wos to divide it — she did. 

Jack. ’Taint possible. It beats my ivories. 
{He pretends to bite it. Jim flies at him in a 
rage.) 


Re-enter Bill, with his mouth full. 

Bill. Now what are you two a squabblin’ 
over? Oh! Jack’s got a yennep, and Jim’s 
lookin’ shirty. 

Jim. She told him to divide it, and he 
won’t. 

Bill. Who told him ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


271 


Jim, Mattie. 

Bill, You dare, Jack ? Hand over. 

Jack, Be hanged if I do. 

Bill, Then do and be hanged. {A struggle,) 
There, Jim ! Now you go and buy what you 
like. 

Jim, Am I to give Jack the half? 

Bill, Yes, if our Mattie said it. 

Jim, All right. Bill. {Goes into the shop,) 

Jack, I owe you one for that. Bill. 

Bill. Owe it me then. Jack. I do like fair 
play — always did {eating). 

Jack, You ain’t a sharin’ of your yennep. 
Bill. 

Bill, Mattie didn’t say I was to. She 
knowed one wouldn’t break up into three 
nohow. ’Tain’t in natur’. Jack. 

Jack, You might ha’ guv me a bite, any- 
how, Bill. 

Bill, It ain’t desirable. Jack — size o’ trap 
dooly considered. Here comes your share. 

Re-enter Jim. Gives a hun to Jack. 

Jim, I tell you what, Bill — she ain’t your 
Mattie. She ain’t nobody’s Mattie ; she’s a 
hangel. 

Bill, No, Jim, she ain’t a hangel; she ’ain’t 
got no wings, leastways outside her clo’es, 
and she ’ain’t got clo’es enough to hide ’em. 
I wish I wos a hangel ! 

Jack. At it again. Bill ! I do like to hear 
Bill a wishin’ of hisself ! Why, Bill ? 


272 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Bill. Acause they’re never ’ungry. 

Jack. How do you know they ain’t? 

Bill. You never sees ’em loafin’ about 
nowheres. 

Jim. Is Mattie your sister, Bill ? 

Bill. No, Jim ; I ain’t good ’nough to have 
a sister like she. 

Jack. Your sweetheart. Bill ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! 

Bill. Dry up. Jack. 

Jim. Tell me about her. Bill. 1 didn’t jaw 
you. 

Bill. She lives in our court, Jim. Makes 
shirts and things. 

Jack. Oh! ho! 

Bill hits Jack. Jack doubles himself up. 

Bill. Jim, our Mattie ain’t like other 
gals ; I never see her out afore this blessed 
day — upon my word and honour, Jim, 
never ! 

Jack {wiping his nose with his sleeve'). You 
don’t know a joke from a jemmy. Bill. 

Bill. I’ll joke you! — A hangel tips you a 
tart, and you plucks her feathers ! Get on 
t’other side of the way, you little dirty devil, 
or I’ll give you another smeller — cheap too. 
Off with you ! 

Jack, No, Bill ; no, please. I’m wery 
sorry. I ain’t so bad’s all that comes to. 

Bill. If you wants to go with Jim and me, 
then behave like a gen’leman. 

Jim. I calls our Mattie a brick I 

Bill. None o’ your jaw, Jim 1 She ain’t 
your Mattie. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


273 


Enter Thomas. 

Tho, Childer, dun yo know th’ way to 
Paradise — Row, or Road, or summat ? 

Bill, Dunnow, sir. You axes at the 
Sunday-school. 

Tho, Wheer’s th’ Sunday-school, chylt ? 

Bill, Second door round the corner, sir. 

Tho, Second dur reawndth’ corner! Which 
corner, my man ? 

Bill, Round any corner. Second door ’s 
all-ways Sunday-school. (^Takes a sight. 
Exeunt boys,) 

Thomas sits down on a door-step, 

Tho, Eh, hut aw be main weary I Surely 
th’ Lord dunnot be a forsakin’ ov mo. There’s 
that abeawt th’ lost ship. Oop yon, wheer 
th’ angels keep greight flocks ov ’em, they 
dunnot like to lose one ov ’em, an’ they met 
well be helpin’ ov mo to look for mo lost 
lamb i’ this awful plaze ! What has th’ shep- 
herd o’ th’ sheep hiinsel’ to do, Grod bless 
him ! but go look for th’ lost ones and carry 
’em whoam 1 0 Lord 1 gie mo mo Mattie. 

Aw’m a silly ship mosel, a sarchin’ for mo 
lost lamb. {Boys begin to gather and stare.) 
She’s o’ the world to me. 0 Lord, hear mo, 
and gie mo mo Mattie. Nea, aw’ll geet oop, 
and go look again. {Rises.) 

First Boy. Ain’t he a cricket. Tommy ? 

Second Boy, Spry, ain’t he? Prod him, 
and see him jump. {General insult,) 

T 


274 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Tho, Why, childer, what have aw done, 
that yo cry after mo like a thief ? 

First Boy, Daddy Longlegs ! Daddy Long- 
legs ! 

They hustle and crowd him. Re-enter Bill. 
Thomas makes a rush. They run. He 
seizes Bill. They gather again. 

Tho, Han yo gotten a mother, lad ? 

Bill. No, thank ye. ’Ain’t got no mother. 
Come of a haunt, I do. 

First Boy. Game ! — ain’t he ? 

Tho. Well, aw’ll tak yo whoam to yor 
aunt — aw wull. 

Bill, Will you now, old chap ? Werywell. 
(^Squats.) 

Tho. {holding him up hy the collar^ and 
shaking his stick over him). Tell mo wheer’s 
yor aunt, or aw’ll breyk every bone i’ yor 
body. 

Bill {wriggling and howling and rubbing his 
eyes with alternate sleeves). Let me go, I 
say. Let me go and I’ll tell ye. I will 
indeed, sir. 

Tho. {letting go). Wheer then, mo lad ? 

Bill {starting up). I’ the church-cellar, 
sir — first bin over the left — feeds musty, and 
smells strong. Ho ! ho ! ho ! {Takes a sight.) 

Thomas makes a dart. Bill dodges him. 

First Boy. Ain’t he a cricket now., Tommy? 

Second Boy. Got one leg too many for a 
cricket, Sam. 

Third Boy. That’s what he jerks hisself 
with, Tommy. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 275 

Tho. Boys, I want to be freens wi’ yo. 
Here’s a penny. 

One of the boys knocks it out of his hand, 
A scramble, 

Tho, Now, boys, dun yo know wbeer’s a 
young woman bi th’ name ov Mattie — some- 
wbeer abeawt Paradise Row ? 

First Boy, Yes, old un. 

Second Boy, Lots on ’em. 

Third Boy, Which on em’ do you want, 
Mr. Cricket ? 

Fourth Boy, You ain’t peticlar, I s’pose, 
old corner-bones ? 

First Boy, Don’t you fret, old stilts. We’ll 
find you a Mattie. There’s plenty on ’em — 
all nice gals. 

Tho, I want mo own Mattie. 

First Boy, Why, you’d never tell one from 
t’other on ’em ! 

Third Boy, All on ’em wery glad to see 
old Daddy Longlegs ! 

Tho, dh dear ! Oh dear ! What an awful 
plaze this Lon’on do be ! To see the childer 
so bad ! 

Second Boy, Don’t cry, gran’pa. Shedi 
chaff you worser ’n us ! W e’re only poor 
little innocent boys. We don’t know nothink, 
bless you ! Oh no ! 

First Boy, You’d better let her alone, arter 
all, bag o’ nails. 

Second Boy, SheW have it out on you now, 
for woppin’ of her when she wor a kid. 

First Boy, She’s a wopper herself now. 


276 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Third Boy. Mighty fine, with your shirt 
for a great-coat. He ! he ! he ! 

Fourth Boy. Mattie never kicks us poor 
innocent boys — cos we ’ain’t got no mothers 
to take our parts. Boo hoo ! 

Enter Jack — his hands in his pockets. 

Jack. What’s the row, Bill ? 

Bill. Dunnow, Jack. Old chap collared 
me when I wasn’t alludin’ to him. He’s after 
some Mattie or other. It can’t be our Mattie. 
She wouldn’t never have such a blazin’ old 
parient as that. 

Jack. Supposin’ it was your Mattie, Bill, 
would you split, and let Scull-and-cross-bones 
nab her ? 

Bill. Would I? Would I ’and over our 
Mattie to her natural enemy ? Did you ax it, 
Jack ? 

Jack. Natural enemy ! My eye. Bill ! what 
words you fakes ! 

Bill. Ain’t he her natural enemy, then ? 
Ain’t it yer father as bumps yer ’ed, an’ 
cusses ye, an’ lets ye see him eat ? Afore he 
gets our Mattie, I’ll bite ! 

Tho. Poor lad ! poor lad ! Dunnot say 
that ! Her feyther’s th’ best freen’ hoo’s 
getten. Th’ moor’s th’ pity, for it’s not mich 
he can do for her. But he would dee for her 
' — he would. 

Boys {all together). Go along. Daddy-devil ! 

Pick yer own bones, an’ ha’ done. 


IF I HAD A FATHER, 


277 


Rag-raker ! 

Skin-cat ! 

Bag o’ nails ! 

Scull-an’-cross-bones ! 

Old Daddy Longlegs wouldn’t say his prayers — 

Take him by his left leg, and throw him downstairs. 

Go along ! Go to hell ! 

Well skin yon. 

Melt ye down for taller, we will. 

Only he ’ain’t got none, the red herrin’ ! 

TTiey throw things at him. He sits down on 
the door-step,, and covers his head with 
his arms. Enter Col. G. Boys run off, 

Tho, Oh, mo Mattie ! mo Mattie ! 

Col, G, Poor old fellow ! Are yon hnrt ? 

Tho, Eh ! yo be a followin’ ov mo too ! 

Col. G, What are yon doing here ? 

Tom, What am aw doin’ yere ! Thee 
knows well enongh what aw’re a doin’ yere. 
It Ve o’ thy fan’t, mon. 

Col, G, Why, yon’ve got a blow ! Yonr 
head is cut ! Poor old fellow ! 

Tho, Never yo mind mo yed. 

Col, G, Yon mnst go home. 

Tho, Goo whoam, says to ! Aw goo no- 
wheers bnt to th’ grave afoor aw’ve feawnd 
mo chylt. 

Col, G, Come along with me ; I will do all 
I can to find her. Perhaps I can help yon 
after all. 

Tho, Aw mak nea deawbt o’ that, mon. 
And thae seems a gradely chap. Aw’m 


278 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


a’most spent. An’ aw’m sick, sick ! Dunnot 
let tk’ boys shove mo abeawt again. 

CoL G. I will not. They shan’t come near 
you. Take my arm. Poor old fellow ! If 
you would but trust me ! Hey ! Cab there ! 

Exeunt, 


Enter peeping. 

Sus. I wonder whatever’s come to Mattie ! 
It’s long time she was out again. 

Enter Mattie, hurriedly. 

Mat. Oh, Susan ! Susan ! {Falls.) 

Sus. Mattie ! Mattie ! {Kneels beside her^ 
and undoes her bonnet.) 

Enter Policeman. 

Pol. What ails her ? ( Goes to lift her.) 

Sus. Leave her alone, will you ? Let her 
head down. Get some water. 

Pol. Drunk — is she ? 

Sus. Hold your tongue, you brute! If 
she’d a satin frock on, i’stead o’ this here 
poor cotton gownd, you’d ha’ showed her 
t’other side o’ your manners ! Get away with 
you. You’re too ugly to look at. — Mattie! 
Mattie 1 Look up, child. 

Pol. She mustn’t lie there. 

Mat. Susan! 

Pol. Come, my girl, 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


279 


Sus, You beep off, I tell you ! Don’t touch 
her. She’s none o’ your sort. Come, Mattie, 
dear. — Why don’t you make ’em move on ? 

Pol, You’d better keep a civil tongue in 
your head, young woman. 

Sus, You live lobster ! 

Pol, I’ll have to lock you up, I see. One 
violent. T’other incapable. 

Sus, You’re another. Mattie, my dear, 
come along home. 

Pol, That’s right ; be off with you. 

Matite rises. 

Mat, Let’s go. Sue ! Let’s get farther off. 

Sus, You can’t walk, child. If I hadn’t 
been so short o’ wittles for a week, I could 
ha’ carried you. But it’s only a step to the 
cook-shop. 

Mat, No money. Sue. {Tries to walk.') 

Sus. 0 Lord ! What shall I do ! And 
that blue-bottle there a buzzin’ an’ a starin’ 
at us like a dead codfish ! — Boh ! 

Enter Bill. 

Bill. Our Mattie! Gracious! what’s the 
row, Susan ? 

Sus. She ain’t well. Take her other arm. 
Bill, and help her out o’ this. We ain’t in no 
Christian country. Pluck up, Mattie, dear. 

Bill. Come into the tart-shop. I’m a 
customer. 

They go towards the shop. Exit Policeman. 

Mat, No, no, Sukey ! I can’t ^bide the 


280 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


smell of it. Let me sit on the kerb for a 
minute. {Sits down.) Oh, fether ! father ! 

Bill. Never you mind, Mattie ! If he wor 
twenty fathers, he shan’t come near ye. 

Mat. Oh, Bill! if you could find him for 
me 1 He would take me home. 

Bill. Now who’d ha’ thought o’ that ? 
Axially wantin’ her own father! Fd run 
far enough out o’ the way o’ mine — an’ 
farther if he wur a-axin’ arter me. 

Mat. Oh me ! my side ! 

Sus. It’s hunger, poor dear! {Sits down 
beside her.) 

Bill {aside). This won’t do, Bill ! I’m 
ashamed o’ you, Bill ! Exit. 

Mat. No, Susan, it’s not hunger. It’s the 
old story. Sue. 

Sus. Mattie ! I never ! You don’t mean 
to go for to tell me you’re a breakin’ of your 
precious heart about him f It’s not your 
gentleman sureZy ! It’s not him ye’re turnin’ 
sick about, this time o’ day ? 

jSIattie nods her head listlessly. 

Sus. What’s up fresh, then ? You was 
pretty bobbish wlien you left me. It’s little 
he thinks of you^ I’ll be bound. 

Mai That’s true enough. It’s little he 
ever thought of me. He did say he loved 
rne, though. It’s fifty times he did ! 

Sus. Lies, lies, Mattie — all lies ! 

Mat. No, Susan ; it wasn’t lies. He meant 
it — at the time. That’s what made it look 
all right, Oh dear ! Ob dear ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 281 

Su$, But what’s come to you now, Mattie ? 
What’s fresh in it? You’re not turned like 
this all at once for nothink ! 

Mat, I’ve seen him ! 

Sus, Seen him ! Oh, my ! I wish it had 
been me. i’d ha’ seen him! I’d ha’ torn 
his ugly eyes out. 

Mat, They ain’t ugly eyes. They’re big 
and blue, and they sparkle so when he talks 
to her 1 

Sus, And who’s her f Ye didn’t mention 
a her. Some brazen-faced imperence 1 

Mat, No. The young lady at Mrs. 
’Clifford’s. 

Sus, Oho 1 See if I do a stitch for her ! 
— Shan’t I leave a needle in her shimmy, just ! 

Mat, What shall I do 1 All the good’s 
gone out of me 1 And such a pain here I 

Sus, Keep in yer breath a minute, an’ 
push yer ribs out. It’s one on ’em’s got a 
top o’ the other. 

Mat, Such a grand creature! And her 
colour coming and going like the shadows on 
the corn ! It‘s no wonder he forgot poor me. 
But it’ll burn itself out afore long. 

Sus, Don’t ye talk like that, Mattie ; I can’t 
abear it. 

Mat, If I was dressed like her, though, and 
could get my colour back ! But laws ! I’m 
such a washed out piece o’ goods beside her ! 

Sus, That’s as I say, Matilda! It’s the 
dress makes the differ. 

Mat, No, Susan, it ain’t. It’s the free 


282 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


look of them — and the head np — and the 
white hands — and the taper fingers. They’re 
stronger than ns, and they’re that trained 
like, that all their body goes in one, like the 
music at a concert. I couldn’t pick up a 
needle without going down on my knees 
after it. It’s the pain in my side. Sue. — 
Yes, it’s a fine thing to be born a lady. It’s 
not the clothes, Sue. If we was dressed ever 
so, we couldn’t come near them. It’s that 
look, — I don’t know what. 

Sus. Speak for yerself, Mattie; i’m not a 
goin’ to think such small beer of myself, I 
can tell you ! I believe if I’d been took in 
time 

Mat, It’s a big if that though. Sue. — And 
then she looked 5^? good ! You’d hardly think 
it of me, — perhaps it’s because I’m dying — 
but for one minute I could ha’ kissed her 
very shoes. Oh, my side ! 

Sus. {putting her arm tight round her waist). 
Does that help it Mattie, dear ? — a little teeny 
bit ? 

Mat, Yes, Sukey. It holds it together a 
bit. Will he break her heart too, I wondei ? 

Sus, No fear o’ that ! Ladies takes care o’ 
theirselves. They’re brought up to it. 

Mat, It’s only poor girls gentlemen don’t 
mind hurting, I suppose. 

Sus, It’s the ladies’ fathers and brothers, 
Mattie! We’ve got nobody to look after us. 

Mat, They may break their hearts, though, 
for all that. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 283 

Su6 They won’t forgive them like yon, 
then, Mattie ! 

I dare say they’re much the same as 
we are when it comes to that, Sue. 

Sus. Don't say me, Mattie. I wouldn’t 
forgive him — no, not if I was to die for it. 
But what came of it, child ? 

Mat, I made some noise, I suppose, and the 
lady started. 

Sus. And then you up and spoke ? 

Mat. I turned sick, and fell down. 

Sus. Poor dear ! 

Mat. She got me a glass of wine, but I 
couldn’t swallow it, and got up and crawled out. 

Sus. Did he see you ? 

Mat. I think he "did. 

Sus. You’ll tell her, in course ? 

Mat. No, Sue ; he’d hate me, and I couldn’t 
bear that. Oh me! my side! It’s so bad! 

Sus. Let’s try for home, Mattie. It's a 
long way, and there’s nothing to eat when 
you’re there ; but you can lie down, and 
that’s everything to them as can’t sit up. 

Mat. {rising). I keep fancying I’m going 
to meet my father. 

Sus. Let’s fancy it then every turn all the 
way home, an’ that’ll get us along. There, 
take my arm. There ! — Come along. Exeunt. 

Slow music. Twilight. 

Enter Bill with a tlwee-legged stool, brushes, etc. 

Bill. Come ! it’s blackin’ all over ! When 


284 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


gents can’t no longer see their boots, ’tain’t 
much use offerin’ to shine ’em. But if I can 
get a penny, I will. I must take a tart to 
Mattie, or this here damaged one {laying his 
hand on his stomach) won’t go to sleep this 
night. 


Enter Waterfield. 

Bill, Black your boots for a party, sir ? 

Wat, {aside) The very rascal I saw her 
speaking to ! But wasn’t she a brick not to 
split ! That’s what I call devotion now ! 
There are some of them capable of it. I’ll 
set her up for life. I’d give a cool thousand 
it hadn’t happened, though. I saw her father 
too hanging about Gervaise’s yesterday. 

Bill, Clean your boots, sir ? Shine ’em till 
they grin like a Cheshire cat eatin’ cheese ! 

Wat, Shine away, you beggar. 

Bill {turning up his trousers), I ain’t no 
beggar, sir. Shine for a shiner’s fair play. 

Wat, Do you live in this neighbourhood ? 

Bill, No, sir. 

Wat, Where, then ? 

Bill {feeling where a pocket should he), I 
don’t appear to ’ave a card about me, sir, but 
my address is Lamb’s Court, Camomile Street 
— leastways I do my sleepin’ not far off of it. 
I’ve lived there, what livin’ I have done, sin’ 
ever I wor anywheres as I knows on. 

Wat, Do you happen to know a girl of the 
name of Pearson ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


285 


Bill, No, sir. I can’t say as how I rec’lect 
the name. Is she a old girl or a young un ? 

Wat, You young liar ! I saw you talking 
to her not two hours ago ! 

Bill, Did ye now, sir ? That’s odd, ain’t 
it ? Bless you ! I talks to everybody. I ain’t 
proud, sir. 

Wat, Well, do you see this? (liolding up a 
sovereign ). 

Bill, That’s one o’ them things what don’t 
require much seein’, sir. There ! Bright as 
a butterfly ! T’other twin, sir ! 

Wat, I’ll give you this, if you’ll do some- 
thing for me — and another to that when the 
thing’s done. 

Bill, ’Tain’t stealin’, sir ? 

Wat, No. 

Bill, Cos, you see, Mattie 

Wat, Who did you say ? 

Bill, Old Madge as lets the beds at tup- 
pence a short night. ’Tain’t stealin’, you say, 
sir ? 

Wat, What do you take me for ? I want 
you to find out for me where the girl Pearson 
lives — that’s all. 

Bill {snatching the sovereign and putting it 
in his mouth). Now then, sir! — What’s the 
young woman like ? 

Wat, Bather tall — thin — dark hair — large 
dark eyes — and long white hands. Her 
name’s Matilda — Mattie Pearson — the girl 
you were talking to, I tell you, on this very 
spot an hour or two ago. 


286 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Bill {dropping the sovereign^ and stooping to 
find it), Grolly ! it is our Mattie! 

Wat, Shall you know her again ? 

Bill, Any boy as wasn’t a hass woulc* 
know his own grandmother by them spots. 
Besides, I remember sich a gal addressin’ of 
me this mornin’. If you say her it was, I’ll 
detect her for ye. 

Wat. There’s a good boy I What’s your 
name? 

Bill, Timothy, sir. 

Wat, What else ? 

Bill, Never had no other — leastways as I 
knows on. 

Wat, Well, Timothy — there’s the other 
sov. — and it’s yours the moment you take me 
to her. Look at it. 

Bill, My eye I — Is she a square Moll, sir ? 

Wat, What do you mean by that ? 

Bill, Green you are, to be sure 1 — She ain’t 
one as steals, or 

Wat, Not she. She’s a sempstress — a 
needlewoman, or something of the sort. 

Bill, And where shall I find you, sir ? 

Wat, Let me see : — to-morrow night — on 
the steps of St. Martin’s Church — ten o’clock. 

Bill, But if I don’t find her ? It may be a 
week — or a month — or 

Wat, Come whether you find her or not, 
and let me know. 

Bill, All serene, sir I There you are, sir 1 
Brush your trousers, sir ? 

Wat. No ; leave ’em. — Don’t forget now. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 287 

Bill, Honour bright, sir ! Not if I knows 
it, sir ! 

Wat, There’s that other skid, you know. 

Bill, All right, sir ! Anything more, sir ? 

Wat, Damn your impudence ! Get along. 

Exit, Bill watches him into Mrs. Clif- 
ford’s. 

Bill, Now by all the ’ungry gums of Ara- 
biar, ’ere’s a swell arter our Mattie ! — A right 
rig’lar swell ! I knows ’em — soverings an’ 
red socks. What’s come to our Mattie ? 
’Ere’s Daddy Longlegs arter her, vith his 
penny and his blessin’ ! an’ ’ere’s this ’ere 
mighty swell vith his soverings — an’ his red 
socks ! An’ she’s ’ungry, poor gal ! — This 
’ere yellow-boy ? — I ’ain’t got no faith in 
swells — no more ’n in Daddy Longlegses — I 
’ain’t! — S’posin’ he wants to marry her? — Not 
if I knows it. He ain’t half good ’nough for 
her. Too many quids — goin’ a hingin’ on 
’em about like buttons ! He’s been a crackin’ 
o’ cribs — he has. T ain’t a goin’ to interduce 
our Mattie to no sich blokes as him. No 
fathers or lovyers for me — says 1 1 — But this 
here pebble o’ Paradise ! — What’s to be done 
wi’ the cherub ? I can’t tell her a lie about 
it, an’ who’ll break it up for a cove like me, 
lookin’ jes’ as if I’d been an’ tarred myself 
and crep’ through a rag-bag ! They’d jug 
me. An’ what ’ud Mattie say then ? I wish 
I ’adn’t ’a’ touched it. I’m blowed if I don’t 
toss it over a bridge I — Then the gent ’ain’t 
got the weight on his dunop out o’ me. 0 


288 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Lord ! what shall I do with it ? I wish I’d 
skied it in his face ! I don’t believe it’s a 
good nn ; I don’t ! {Bites it.) It do taste 
wery nasty. It’s nothin’ better ’n a gilt 
fardin’ ! Jes’ what a cove might look for 
from sich a swell ! {Goes to a street lamp and 
examines it.) Lor ! there’s a bobby ! {Exit, 
Re-enter to the lamp.) I wish the gen’leman 
’ad guv me a penny. I can’t do nothin’ wi’ 
this ’ere quid. Yere am I to put it ? I ’ain’t 
got no pocket, an’ if I was to stow it in my 
’tato-trap, I couldn’t wag my red rag — an’ 
Mother Madge ’ud soon have me by the 
chops. Nor I’ve got noveres to plant it. — O 
Lor ! it’s all I’ve got, an’ Madge lets nobody 
go to bed without the tuppence. It’s all up 
with Bill— yb?’ the night ! — Where’s the odds! 
— there’s a first-class hotel by the river — The 
Adelphi Arches, they calls it — where they’ll 
take me in fast enough, and I can go to sleep 
with it in my cheek. Coves is past talkin’ to 
you there. Nobody as sees me in that ’ere 
’aunt of luxury, ’ill take me for a millionaire 
vith a skid in his mouth. ’Tain’t a bit cold 
to-night neither (poing ). — Yy do they say a 
aunt of luxury ? 1 s’pose acause she’s wife to 

my uncle. Exit, 

Slow music. The night passes. A police- 
man crosses twice. Thomas crosses be- 
tween. Dawn. 

Re-enter Bill. 

Bill. I’m hanged if this here blasted quid 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


289 


ain’t a burnin’ of me like a red-hot fardin’ ! 
I’m blest if I’ve slep’ more ’n half the night. 
I woke up oncet, with it a slippin’ down red 
lane. I wish I had swallered it. Then no- 
body ’d ’a’ ast me vere I got it. I don’t 
wonder as rich coves turn out sich a bad lot. 
I believe the devil’s in this ’ere ! 

Knocks at Mrs. Clifford’s door, James 
opens. Is shutting it again. Bill shoves 
in his stool. 

Bill. Hillo, Blazes ! where’s your manners ? 
Is that the way you behaves to callers on 
your gov’nor’s business ? 

James (half opening the door'). Get about 
your own business, you imperent boy ! 

Bill, I’m about it now, young man. I 
wants to see your gov’nor. 

James, Youve got business with him, have 
you, eh ? 

Bill, Amazin’ precoxity ! You’ve hit it ! 
I have got business with him, Door-post — not 
in the wery smallest with you. Door-post ! — 
essep’ the knife-boy’s been and neglected of 
your feet-bags this mornin’. (James would 
slam the door. Bill shoves in his stool.) Don’t 
you try that ’ere little game again, young 
man ! for if I loses my temper and takes to 
hollerin’, you’ll wish yourself farther. 

James, A humbug you are ! I ’ain’t got 
no gov’nor, boy. The master as belongs to 
me is a mis’ess. 

Bill, Then that ’ere gen’lemen as comes 
an’ goes, ain’t vour master — eh ? 


290 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


James, What gen’leman, atoopid ? 

Bill, Oh ! it don’t matter. 

James, What have — you — got to say to 
him ? 

Bill, Some’at pickled : it’ll keep. 

James, I’ll give him a message, if you 
like. 

Bill, Well, you may tell him the bargain’s 
hoff, and if he wants his money, it’s a waitin’ 
of him round the corner. 

James, You little blackguard ! Do you 
suppose a gen’leman’s a goin’ to deliver sich 
a message as that ! Be off, you himp ! (^Makes 
a dart at him.) 

Bill {dodging him). How d’e do. Clumsy ? 
Don’t touch me ; I ain’t nice. Why, what 
was you made for. Parrot ? Is them calves 
your own rearin’ now ? Is that a quid or a 
fardin ? Have a shot, now. Shins. 

James. None o’ your imperence, young 
blackie ! ’And me over the money, and I’ll 
give it to the gen’leman. 

Bill, Do you see anything peticlar green 
in my eye. Rainbow ? 

James makes a rush. Bill gets down before 
him. James tumbles over him. Bill 
blacks his face with his brush. 

Bill {running a little way). Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
Bill Shoeblack — his mark ! Who’s blackie 
now? You owes me a penny — twopence — 
’twor sich a ugly job ! Ain’t shiny ? I’ll 
come back and shine ye for another penny. 
Good mornin’, Jim Crow ! Take my adwice, 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


291 


and don’t on no account apply your winegar 
afore you’ve opened your hoyster. Likeways : 
Butter don’t melt on a cold tater. Exit, 

Exit James into the house, hanging the door. 

Enter W followed hy Bill. 

Bill, Please, sir, I been a watchin’ for you. 

Wat, Gro to the devil ! 

Bill, I’d raytber not. So there’s your suv’- 
ring ! 

Wat, Go along. Meet me where I told 
you. . , , . 

Bill, I won’t. There’s yer skid. 

Wat, Be off, or I’ll give you in charge. 
Hey ! Policeman ! Exit, 

Bill, Well, I’m blowed ! This quid ’ll be 
the hangin’ o’ me ! Damn you ! ( Throws it 

fiercely on the ground and stamps on it.') Serves 
me right for chaffin’ the old un ! He didn’t 
look a bad sort — for a gov’nor. — Now I re- 
flexes, I heerd Mattie spoony on some father 
or other, afore. 0 Lord ! I’ll get Jim and 
Jack to help me look out for him. {Enter 
Thomas.) Lor’ ha’ mussy ! — talk o’ the old 
un ! — I’m wery peticlar glad as I found you, 
daddy. I been a lookin’ for ye — leastways I 
was a goin’ to look for ye this wery moment as 
you turns up. I chaffed you like a zorologicle 
monkey yesterday, daddy, an’ I’m wery 
sorry. But you see fathers ain’t nice i’ this 
’ere part o’ the continent. {Enter James, 
in plain clothes, watching them,) They ain’t 


292 


IF I HAD A FATHEK. 


DO good nohow to nobody. If I wos a hus- 
band and a father, I don’t know as how I 
should be A One, myself. P’raps I might 
think it wur my turn to break arms and 
legs. I knowed more ’n one father as 
did. It’s no wonder the boys is a plaguy 
lot, daddy. 

Tko, Goo away, boy. Dosto yer, aw’ve 
seen so mich wickedness sin’ aw coom to 
Lon’on, that aw dunnot knaw whether to 
breighk thi yed, or to goo wi’ tho ? There 
be tljieves and there be robbers. 

Bill, Never fear, daddy. You ain’t worth 
robbin’ of, I don’t think. 

Tho, How dosto knaw that ? Aw’ve 
moore ’n I want to lose abeawt mo. 

Bill, Then Mattie ’ill have som’at to eat — 
will she, daddy ? 

Tho, Som’at to eight, boy ! Be mo Mattie 
hungry — dun yo think ? 

Bill, Many and many’s the time, daddy. 

Tho, Yigh — afore her dinner ! 

Bill, And after it too, d:iddy. 

Tho. 0 Lord ! — And what does hoo do 
when hoo ’s hungry ? 

Bill. Grins and bears it. Come and see 
her, daddy ? 

Tho. 0 Lord ! Mo Mattie, an’ nothin’ to 
eight ! Goo on, boy. Aw’m beawn to 
follow yo. Tak mo wheer yo like. Aw’F. 
goo. 

Bill, Come along then, daddy. 

James (collaring him). Hullo, young un! 


IF I UAD A FATHER. 293 

Yon’re the rascal as stole the suvering : I saw 
you ! 

Bill, Dunno what you’re up to. I never 
stole nothink. 

James, Oh no ! of course not ! What’s 
that in yer fist now? (Catches Bill’s hand^ 
and forces it open,) There ! 

Bill drops his stool on James’s foot, throws 
up the coin, catches it with his other 
hand, and puts it in his mouth, 

Tho, Theighur ! Theighur ! The like ov 
that ! Aw’re agooin wi’ a thief — aw wur ! 

Bill, Never you mind, daddy. It wur guv 
to me. 

James, That’s what they alius says, sir. — 
You come along. — I’d be obliged to you, 
sir, if you would come too, and say you saw 
him. 

Tho, Nay! aw connot say aw seigh him 
steyle it. 

James, You saw it in his hand. 

Tho, Yigh 1 aw did. 

Bill, It wis guv to me, I tell ye. 

James, Honest boy, this one! Looks like 
it, don’t he, sir ? What do you think of 
yourself, you young devil, a decoying of a 
grey-haired old gen’leman like this ? Why, 
sir, him an’ his pals ’ud ha’ taken every 
penny you had about you! Murdered you, 
they might — I’ve knowed as much. It’s a 
good thing I ’appened on the spot. — Come 
along, you bad boy ! 


294 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


James. Come along. They’ll change it for 
you at the lock-up. 

Bill. You didn’t see me steal it ! You ain’t 
never a goin’ to gi’ me in charge ? 

James. Wrong again, young un! That’s 
percisely what I am a goin’ to do ! 

Bill. Oh, sir ! please, sir ! I’m a honest 
boy. It’s the Bible-truth. I’ll kiss twenty 
books on it. 

James. I won’t ax you. — Why, sir, he ain’t 
even one o’ the shoe-brigade. He ’ain’t got 
a red coat. Bless my soul ! he ’ain’t even got 
a box — nothin’ but a scrubby pair o’ brushes 
— as I’m alive ! He ain’t no shoeblack. He’s 
a thief as purtends to black shoes, and picks 
pockets. 

Bill. You’re a liar! I never picked a 
pocket in my life. 

James. Bad language, you see! What 
more would you have ? 

Tho. Who’d iver ha’ thowt o’ sich wicked- 
ness in a boy like that ! 

Bill. I ain’t a wicked boy. 

Tho. Nay, doan’t thae tell mo that ! Thae 
made gam of mo, and hurried and scurried mo, 
as iv aw’d been a mak ov a deevil — yo did. 

James. He’s one of the worst boys I know. 
This Timothy is one of the very worst boys 
in all London. 

Bill {aside). Timothy, eh ? I twigs ! It’s 
Eainbow, by Peter and Paul ! — Look ye here, 
old gen’leman ! This ’ere’s a bad cove as is 
takin’ adwantage o’ your woolliness. I knows 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


295 


him. His master guv me the suvering. He 
guv it to me to tell him where your Mattie 
was. 

Janies, Don’t you fancy you’re gnin’ to 
take in an experienced old gen’leman like that 
with your cock-and-bull stories ! Come along, 
I say. Hey ! Police ! 

Bill, Here you are ! ( Takes the coin from 

his mouth, rubs it dry on his jacket, and offers 
it,) I don’t want it. Give it to old Hunx 
there. — He shan’t never see his Mattie! I 
wur right to chivy him, arter all. 

James (taking the coin). Now look here, 
Timothy. I’m a detective hofficer. But I 
won’t never be hard on no boy as wants to 
make a honest livin’. So you be hoff! I’ll 
show the old gen’leman where he wants to 
go to. 

Bill moves two paces, and takes a sight at 
him, 

Tho, The Lord be praised ! Dosto know 
eawr Mattie then ? 

James, It’s the dooty of a detective hofEcer 
to know every girl in his beat. 

Bill, My eye 1 there’s a oner 1 

Tho, Tak mo to her, sir, an’ aw’ll pray 
for yo. 

James, I will. — If I cotch you ne^irer than 
Mile End, I’ll give you in charge at oncet. 

Bill (bolting five yards). He’s a humbug, 
daddy 1 but he’ll serve you right. He’ll melt 
you down for taller. He ain’t no ’tective. 1 
know him. 


296 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


TJio, Goo away. 

Bill. Good-bye, daddy! He don’t know 
yonr Mattie. Good-bye, skelington I Exit. 

Tho. Eh 1 sech a boy I 

James. Let me see. You want a girl of 
tbe name of Mattie ? 

Tho. Aw do, sir. 

James. The name is not an oncommon one. 
There’s Mattie Kent ? 

Tho. Nay ; it’s noan o’ her. 

James. Then there’s Mattie Wincbfield ? 

Tho. Nay ; it’s noan o’ her. 

James. Then there’s Mattie Pearson ? 

Tho. Yigh, that’s hoo 1 That’s hoo 1 
Wheer ? Wheer ? 

James. Well, it’s too far for a man of 
your age to walk. But I’ll call a cab, and 
we’ll go comfortable. 

Tho. But aw connot affoord to peigh for a 
cab — as yo co it. 

James. You don’t suppose I’m a goin’ to 
put an honest man like you to expense ! 

Tho. It’s but raysonable I should peigh. 
But thae knows best. 

James. Hey 1 Cab there ! Exeunt. 

Re-enter Bill, following them. 

Bill. I’ll have an eye of him, though. The 
swell as give me the yellow-boy — he’s his 
master 1 Poor old codger 1 He’ll believe any 
cove but the one as tells him the truth ! 


Exit. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


297 


Enter from the home Mrs. Clifford. Enter 
from opposite side Col. Gr. 

CoL G, I was just coming to see you, 
Clara. 

Mrs, C. And I was going to see you. 
How’s Arthur to-day ? I thought you would 
have come yesterday. 

Col, G, My poor hoy is as dependent on 
me as if I were not his father. I am very 
anxious about him. The fever keeps re- 
turning. 

Mrs, C, Fortune seems to have favoured 
your mad scheme, Walter. 

Col, G, Or something better than fortune. 

Mrs, C, You have had rare and ample 
opportunity. You may end the farce when 
you please, and in triumph. 

Col, G, On the contrary, Clara, it would 
be nothing but an anticlimax to end what 
you are pleased to call the farce now. As if 
I could make a merit of nursing my own 
boy ! I did more for my black servant. I 
wish I had him here. 

Mrs, C, You would like to double the 
watch — would you ? 

Col, G, Something has vexed you, Clara. 

Mrs, C, I never liked the scheme, and I 
like it less every day. 

Col, G, I have had no chance yet. He 
has been ill all the time. I wish you would 
come and see him a little oftener. 


298 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Mrs, C, He doesn’t want me. You are 
everything now. Besides, I can’t come 
alone. 

Col, G, Why not? 

Mrs, C, Constance would fancy I did not 
want to take her. 

Col, G, Then why not take her ? 

Mrs, C, I have my reasons. 

Col, G, What are they ? 

Mrs, C, Never mind. 

Col, G, I insist upon knowing them. 

Mrs, C, It would break my heart, Walter, 
to quarrel with you, but I will if you use 
such an expression. 

Col, G, But why shouldn’t you bring Miss 
Lacordere with you ? 

Mrs, C, He’s but a boy, and it might put 
some nonsense in his head. 

Col, G, She’s a fine girl. You make a 
friend of her. 

Mrs, C, She’s a good girl, and a lady-like 
girl ; but 1 don’t want to meddle with the 
bulwarks of society. I hope to goodness they 
will last my time. 

Col, G, Clara, I begin to doubt whether 
pride he a Christian virtue. 

Mrs, C, I see ! You’ll be a radical before 
long. Everyihmg is going that way. 

Col, G, I don’t care what I am, so I do 
what’s right. I’m sick of all that kind of 
thing. What I want is bare honesty. I 
believe I’m a tory as yet, but I should be a 
radical to-morrow if I thought justice lay on 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 299 

that side. — If a man falls in love with a 
woman, why shouldn’t he marry her ? 

Mrs, C, She may be unfit for him. 

CoL G. How should he fall in love with 
her, then ? Men don’t hill in love with birds. 

Mrs, C, It’s a risk — a great risk. 

Col, G, None the greater that he pleases 
himself, and all the more worth taking. I 
wish my poor boy 

Mrs, C, Your poor boy might please him- 
self and yet not succeed in pleasing you, 
brother ! 

Col, G, (aside). She knows something. — I 
must go and see about his dinner. Good- 
bye, sister. 

Mrs, C, Good-bye, then. You will have 
your own way ! 

Col, G, This once, Clara. Exeunt severally. 


END OF ACT n. 


300 


IF I HAD A FATIlEit, 


ACT III. 

Scene. — A garret-room. Mattie. Susan. 

Mat, At the worst we’ve got to die some 
day, Sue, and I don’t know but hunger may 
be as easy a way as another. 

Sus, I’d rather have a choice, though. 
And it’s not hunger I would choose. 

Mat, There are worse ways. 

Sas, Never mind : we don’t seem likely to 
be bothered wi’ choosin’. 

Mat, There’s that button-hole done. (^Lays 
down her work with a sigh, and leans hack in 
her chair,) 

Sus, I’ll take it to old Nathan. It’ll be a 
chop a-piece. It’s wonderful what a chop 
can do to hearten you up. 

Mat, I don’t think we ought to buy chops, 
dear. We must be content with bread, I 
think. 

Sus, Bread, indeed ! 

Mat, Well, it’s something to eat. 

Sus, Do you call it eatin’ when you see a 
dog polishin’ a bone ? 

Mat, Bread’s very good with a cup of tea. 

Sus, Tea, indeed ! Fawn-colour, trimmed 
with sky-blue ! — If you’d mentioned lobster- 
salad and sherry, now ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


301 


Mat* I never tasted lobster-salad. 

Sus* I have, though ; and I do call lobster- 
salad good. You don’t care about your 
wittles : I do. When I’m hungry, I’m not 
at all comfortable. 

Mat* Poor dear Sue ! There is a crust in 
the cupboard. 

Sus* I cant eat crusts. I want summat 
nice. I ain’t dyin’ of ’unger. It’s only I’m 
peckish. Very peckish, though. I could eat 
— let me see what I could eat : — I could eat 
a lobster-salad, and two dozen oysters, and 
a lump of cake, and a wing and a leg of a 
chicken — if it was a spring chicken, with 
watercreases round it — and a Bath-bun, and 
a sandwich ; and in fact I don’t know what 
I couldn’t eat, except just that crust in the 
cupboard. And I do believe I could drink 
a whole bottle of champagne. 

Mat* I don’t know what one of those 
things tastes like — scarce one ; and I don’t 
believe you do either. 

Sus* Don’t I? — I never did taste cham- 
pagne, but I’ve seen them eating lobster- 
salad many a time ; — girls not half so good- 
lookin’ as you or me, Mattie, and fine 
gentlemen a waitin’ upon ’em. Oh dear ! I 
am so hungry ! Think of having your 
supper with a real gentleman as talks to you 
as if you was fit to talk to — not like them 
Jew-tailors, as tosses your work about as if 
it dirtied their fingers — and them none so 
clean for all their fine rings ! 


302 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Mat. I saw Nathan’s Joseph in a pastry- 
cook’s last Saturday, and a very pretty girl 
with him, poor thing ! 

Sus. Oh the hussy to let that beast pay for 
her ! 

Mat. I suppose she was hungry. 

Sus. I’d die before I let a snob like that 
treat me. No, Mattie ! I spoke of a real 
gentleman. 

Mat. Are you sure you wouldn’t take 
Nathan’s Joseph for a gentleman if he was 
civil to you ? 

Sus. Thank you, miss ! I know a sham 
from a real gentleman the moment I set eyes 
on him. 

Mat. What do you mean by a real gentle- 
man, Susan ?* 

Sus. A gentleman as makes a lady of his 
girl. 

Mat. But what sort of lady. Sue ? The 
poor girl may fancy herself a lady, but only 
till she’s left in the dirt. That sort of 
gentleman makes fine speeches to your face, 
and calls you horrid names behind your back. 
Sue, dear, don’t have a word to say to one of 
them — if he speaks ever so soft. 

Sus. Lawks, Mattie ! they ain’t all one 
sort. 

Mat. You won’t have more than one sort 
to ‘‘choose from. They may be rough or civil, 
good-natured or bad, but they’re all the same 
in this, that not one of them cares a pin more 
for you than if you was a horse — no — nor 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


303 


half a quarter so much. Don’t for God’s 
sake have a word to say to one of them. If 
I die, Susan 

Sus. If you do, Matilda — if you go and do 
that thing, I’ll take to gin — that’s what I’ll 
do. Don’t say I didn’t act fair, and tell you 
beforehand. 

Mat, How can I help dying, Susan ? 

Sus, I say. Don’t do it, Mattie. We’ll fall 
out, if you do. Don’t do it, Matilda — La ! 
there’s that lumping Bill again — a/ways a 
cornin’ up the stair when you don’t want 
him ! 


Enter Bill. 

Mat, Well, Bill, how have you been 
getting on ? 

Bill, Pretty tollol, Mattie. But I can’t go 
on so. {Holds out his stool.) It ain’t respect- 
able. 

Mat. What ain’t respectable ? Every- 
thing’s respectable that’s honest. 

Bill. Why, who ever saw a respectable 
shiner goin’ about with a three-legged stool 
for a blackin’ box ? It ain’t the thing. The 
rig’lars chaffs me fit to throw it at their 
’eads, they does — only there’s too many on 
’em, an’ I’ve got to dror it mild. A box I 
must have, or a feller’s ockypation’s gone. 
Look ye here ! One bob, one tanner, and 
a joey ! There ! that’s what comes of never 
condescending to an ’a’penny. 


304 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Sus. Bless US ! what mighty fine words 
we’ve got a waitin’ on us ! 

£ilL If I ’ave a weakness, Miss Susan, it’s 
for the right word in the right place — as the 
coster said to the devil-dodger as blowed him 
up for purfane swearin’. — When a genleman 
hoffers me an ’a’penny, I axes him in the 
purlitest manner I can assume, to oblige me 
by givin’ of it to the first beggar he may ’ave 
the good fort’n to meet. Some on ’em throws 
down the ’a’penny. Most on ’em makes it a 
penny. — But I say, Mattie, you don’t want 
nobody arter you — do you now ? 

3Iat, I don’t know what you mean by that. 
Bill. 

Bill, You don’t want a father — do you 
now ? Do she, Susan ? 

Sus, We want no father a hectorin’ here. 
Bill. You ’ain’t seen one about, have you ? 

Bill, I seen a rig’lar swell arter Mattie, 
anyhow. 

Mat, What do you mean. Bill ? 

Bill. A rig’lar swell — I repeats it — a astin’ 
arter a young woman by the name o’ Mattie. 

Sus, (pulling him aside). Hold your 
tongue. Bill ! You’ll kill her ! You young 
viper ! Hold your tongue, or I’ll twist your 
neck. Don’t you see how white she is ? 

Mat, What was he like ? Do tell me. Bill. 

Bill. A long-legged rig’lar swell, with 
a gold chain, and a cane with a hivory 
’an die. 

Sus. He’s a bad man. Bill, and Mattie 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 305 

can’t abide him. If you tell him where she 
is, she’ll never speak to you ao^ain. 

Mat, Oh, Susan ! what shall I do ? Don’t 
bring him here. Bill. I shall have to run 
away again ; and I can’t, for we owe a week’s 
rent. 

Sus, There, Bill ! 

Bill, Don’t you be afeard, Mattie. He 
shan’t touch you. Nor the old one neither. 

Mat, There wasn’t an old man with him ? 
— not an old man with a long stick ? 

Bill, Not with him. Daddy was on his 
own hook ? 

Mat, It must have been my father, Susan. 
{Sinks hack on her chair,') 

Sus, ’Tain’t the least likely. — There, Bill ! 
I always said you was no good ! You’ve 
killed her. 

Bill, Mattie! Mattie! I didn’t tell him 
where you was. 

Mat, {reviving), Kun and fetch him. Bill — 
there’s a dear ! Oh ! how proud I’ve been ! If 
mother did say a hard word, she didn’t mean it 
— not for long. Run, Bill, run and fetch him. 

Bill, Mattie, I was a fetchin’ of him, but 
he wouldn’t trust me. And didn’t he cut up 
crusty, and collar me tight ! He’s a game 
old cock — he is, Mattie. 

Mat. {getting up and pacing about the room). 
Oh, Susan ! my heart ’ll break. To think he’s 
somewhere near and I can’t get to him ! Oh 
my side ! Don't you know where he is. Bill ? 

Bill, He’s someveres about, and blow me 


306 


IF I HAD A FATHEB. 


if I don't find him ! — a respectable old party 
in a white pinny, an’ ’peared as if he’d go on 
a walkin’ till he walked hisself up standin’, 
A scrumptious old party ! 

Mat. Had he a stick, Bill ? 

Bill. Yes — a knobby stick — leastways a 
stick wi’ knobs all over it. 

Mat. That’s him, Susan ! 

Bill. I could swear to the stick. I was too 
near gittin’ at the taste on it not to know it 
again. 

Mat. When was it you saw him, Bill ? 

Bill. Yesterday, Mattie — jest arter you 
give me the tart. I sawr him again this 
mornin’, but he wouldn’t place no confidence 
in me. 

Mat. Oh dear ! Why didn’t you come 
straight to me, Bill ? 

Bill. If I’d only ha’ known as you wanted 
him ! But that was sech a r^/zlikely thing ! 
It’s werry perwokin’ ! I uses my judgment, 
an’ puts my hoof in it ! I am sorry, Mattie. 
But I didn’t know no better (crying). 

Mat. Don’t cry. Bill. You’ll find him for 
me yet — won’t you ? 

Bill. I’m off this indentical minute. But 
you see 

Sus. There ! there ! — now you mizzle. 1 
don’t want no fathers here — goodness 
knows ; but the poor girl’s took a fancy to 
hers, and she’ll die if she don’t get him. 
Run now — there’s a good boy ! {Exit Bill.) 
You ’ain’t forgotten who’s a cornin’, Mattie ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


307 


Mat, No, indeed. 

Sus, Well, I hope she’ll be civil, or I’ll just 
give her a bit of my mind. 

Mat, Not enough to change hers, I’m 
afraid. That sort of thing never does any 
good. 

Sus, And am I to go a twiddlin’ of my 
thumbs, and say in’ yes^ ma'am, an’ no, ma'am ? 
Not if I knows it, Matilda ! 

Alat, You will only make her the more 
positive in her ill opinion of us. 

Sus, An’ what’s that to me ? 

Mat, Well, I don’t like to be thought a 
thief. Besides, Mrs. Clifford has been kind 
to us. 

Sus, She’s paid us for work done ; so has 
old Nathan. 

Mat, Did old Nathan ever give you a glass 
of wine when you took home his slops ? 

Sus, Oh ! that don’t cost much ; and be- 
sides, she takes it out in kingdom-come. 

Mat, You’re unfair, Susan. 

Sus, Well, it’s little fairness I get. 

Mat, And to set that right you’re unfair 
yourself! What you call speaking your 
mind, is as cheap, and as nasty, as the 
worst shoddy old Nathan ever got gobble- 
stitched into coats and trousers. 

Sus, Very well. Miss Matilda 1 {rising and 
snatching her bonnet). The sooner we part 
the better 1 You stick by your fine friends 1 
I don’t care that for them ! {snapping her 
fingers) — and you may tell ’em so 1 I can 


308 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


make a livin’ without them or you either. 
Groodness gracious knows it ain’t much of 
a livin’ I’ve made sin’ I come across you^ 
Miss ! Exit, 

Mat, {trying to rise), Susan! Susan! 
{Lays her head on the table), 

A tap at the door, and enter Mrs. Clifford, 
with James behind, Mattie rises. 

Mrs, C, Wait on the landing, James. 
James, Yes, ma’am. 

Exit James, leaving the door a little ajar. 
Mrs, C, Well, Miss Pearson ! {Mattie offers 
a chair,) No, thank you. That person is 
still with you, I see 1 

Mat, Indeed, ma’am, she’s an honest girl. 
Mrs, C, She is a low creature, and capable 
of anything. I advise you to get rid of her. 
Mat, Was she rude on the stair, ma’am ? 
Mrs, C, Eude 1 Vulgar — quite vulgar! 
Insulting ! 

Mat, I am very sorry. But, believe me, 
ma’am, she is an honest girl, and never 
pawned that work. It was done — every 
stitch of it ; and the loss of the money is 
hard upon us too. Indeed, ma’am, she did 
lose the parcel. 

Mrs, C, You have only her word for it. 
If you don’t give her up, I give you up. 

Mat, I can’t, ma’am. She might go into 
bad ways if I did. 

Mrs, C, She can’t well get into worse. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 309 

Her language ! You would do ever so mucli 
better without her. 

Mat, I daren’t, ma’am. I should never 
get it oif my conscience. 

Mrs, C, Your conscience indeed ! (rising), 
I wish you a good morning, Miss Pearson. 
— (Sound of a blow,, follovjed by scuffling ,) — 
What is that ? I fear I have got into an 
improper place. 

Susan bursts in, 

Sus, Yes, ma’am, and that you have ! It’s 
a wery improper place for the likes o’ you, 
ma’am — as believes all sorts o’ wicked things 
of people as is poor. Who are you to bring 
your low flunkies a-listenin’ at honest girls’ 
doors ! ( Turning to James in the doorway^ 

Get out, will you ? Let me catch you here 
again, and I’ll mark you that the devil 
wouldn’t know his own ! You dirty Paul 
Pry — you ! (Falls on her knees to Mattie f 
Mattie, you angel ! 

Mat, (trying to make her get up) Never 
mind. It’s all right between you and me, 
Susan. 

Mrs, C- I see ! I thought as much ! 

Sus, (starting up) As much as what, then, 
my lady ? Oh, / know you and your sort — 
well enough ! We’re the dirt under your 
feet — lucky if we stick to your shoes ! But 
this room’s mine. 

Mrs, (7. That linen was mine, young 
woman, I believe. 


310 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Sus, An’ it’s for that miserable parcel you 
come a-talkin’, an’ abusin’ as no lady ought 
to ! How dare you look that angel in the 
face there an’ say she stole it — which you’re 
not fit to lace her boots for her ! There ! 

Mat, Susan! Susan ! do be quiet. 

Sus. It’s all very well for the likes o’ me 
{courtesying spitefully) — which I’m no better ’n 
I should be, and a great deal worse, if I’m on 
my oath to your ladyship — that’s neither here 
nor there ! — but she^ better’n a van-load o’ 
sich ladies as you, pry in’ into other people’s 
houses, with yer bibles, an’ yer religion, an’ 
yer flunkies I 1 know ye I 1 do I 

Mat. Don’t, Susan. 

Sus. Why don’t ye go an’ pay twopence 
a week to somebody to learn ye good 
manners ? I been better brought up myself. 

Mrs. C. I see I was wrong : I ought at 
once to have handed the matter over to the 
police. 

Sus. The perlice, indeed ! — You get out 
of this, ma’am, or I’ll make you 1 — you and 
your cowardly man-pup there, as is afraid 
to look me in the face through the crack o’ 
the door! Get out, I say, with your — in- 
solence — that’s your word ! 

Exit Mrs. Clifford. 

Mat. Susan ! Susan ! what is to become 
of us ? 

Sus. She daren’t do it — the old scrooge ! 
But just let her try it on ! See if I don’t 
show her up afore the magistrate ! Mattie ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


311 


I’ll work my fingers to the hone for you. I 
would do worse, only you won’t let me. I’ll 
go to the court, and tell the magistrate 
you’re a-dyin’ of hunger, which it’s as true as 
gospel. 

Mat, They’d send me to the workhouse, 
Sukey. 

Sus, There must be some good people 
somewheres, Mattie. 

Mat, Yes ; if we could get at them. But 
we can live till we die, Sukey. 

Sus, I’ll go and list for a soldier, I will. 
Women ha’ done it afore. It’s quite re- 
spectable, so long as they don’t find you out 
— and they shouldn’t me. There's ne’er a 
one o’ the redcoats ’ill cut up rougher ’n I 
shall — barrin’ the beard, and that don’t go for 
much now-a-days. 

Mat, And what should I do without you, 
Susan ? 

Sus, Do you care to have me, then ? 

Mat, That I do, indeed. But you shouldn’t 
have talked like that to Mrs. Clifford. Ladies 
ain’t used to such words. They sound worse 
than they are — quite dreadful, to them. She 
don’t know your kind heart as I do. Besides, 
the look of things is against us. Ain’t it 
now ? Say yourself. 

Sus, {starting up) I’ll go and beg her 
pardon. I’ll go direckly — I will. I swear 
I will. I can’t abear her, but I’ll do it. 
I believe hunger has nigh drove me mad. 

Mat, It takes all th§ inadness out of me,— 


812 


IP I HAD A FATHEK. 


No, Susan ; we must bear it now. Come 
along. We can be miserable just as well 
working. There’s your sleeve. I'll thread 
your needle for you. Don’t cry — there’s a 
dear ! 

Sus, I will cry. It’s all I ever could do to 
my own mind, and it’s all as is left me. But 
if I could get my claws on that lovyer o’ 
yours, I wouldn’t cry then. lle^ at the 
bottom of it ! I don’t see myself what’s the 
use of failin’ in love. One man’s as much of 
a fool as another to me. But you must go to 
bed. You ain’t fit. You’ll be easier when 
you’ve got your frock off. There ! Why, 
child, you’re all of a tremble ! — And no 
wonder, wi’ nothing on her blessed body but 
her frock and her shimmy ! 

Mat, Don’t take off my frock, Sue. I must 
get on with my work. 

Sus. Lie down a bit, anyhow. I’ll lie at 
your back, and you’ll soon be as warm’s a 
toast. (Mat. lies down.) 0 Lord ! she’s 
dead ! Her heart’s stopped heatin’. (^Runs 
out of the room.) 

A moment of silence. A tap at the door. 
Constance peeps in., then enters, with 
a basket. 

Con. Miss Pearson! — She’s asleep. {Goes 
near.) Good heavens! {Lays her hand on 
her.) No. {Takes a bottle from her basket, 
finds a cup, and pours into it.) Take this. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


313 


Miss Pearson ; it will do you good. There 
now ! You’ll find something else in the 
basket. 

Mat, I don’t want anything. I had so 
nearly got away ! Why did you bring me 
back ? 

Con, Life is good ! 

Mat, It is not good. How dare you do it ? 
Why keep a miserable creature alive ? Life 
ain’t to us what it is to you. The grave is 
the only place we have any right to. 

Con, If I could make your life worth 
something to you 

Mat, You make my life worth to me ! 
You don’t know what you’re saying, miss. 
(^Sitting up,') 

Con, I think I do. 

Mat. I will not owe my life to you. I could 
love you, though — your hands are so white, 
and your look so brave. That’s what comes 
of being born a lady. We never have a chance. 

Cow, Miss Pearson — Mattie, I would call 
you, if you wouldn’t be offended 

Mat. Me ofiended, miss ! — I’ve not got life 
enough for it. I only want my father and 
my mother, and a long sleep. — If I had been 
born rich 

Con. You might have been miserable all 
the same. Listen, Mattie. I will tell you 
my story — I was once as badly off as you — 
worse in some ways — ran about the streets 
without shoes to my feet, and hardly a frock 
to cover me. 


314 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Mat. La, miss ! you don’t say so ! It’s not 
possible ! Look at you ! 

Con. Indeed, I tell you the truth. I know 
what hunger is too — well enough. My father 
was a silkweaver in Spitalfields, When he 
died, I didn’t know where to go. But a 
gentleman — 

Mat. Oh ! a gentleman ! — (Fiercely.) Why 
couldn’t you be content with one, then ? 

Co7i. I don’t understand you. 

Mat. I dare say not ! There ! take your 
basket. I’ll die afore a morsel passes my 
lips. There ! Gro away, miss. 

Con. (aside). Poor girl ! she is delirious. 
I must ask William to fetch a doctor. Exit. 

Mat. I wish my hands were as white as 
hers. 

Enter followed hy Col. Gr. Constance 

behind. 

Sus. Mattie ! dear Mattie ! this gentleman 
— don’t be vexed — I couldn’t help him bein’ 
a gentleman ; I was cry in’ that bad, and I 
didn’t see no one come up to me, and when 
he spoke to me, it made me jump, and I 
couldn’t help answerin’ of him — he spoke so 
civil and soft like, and me nigh mad ! I 
thought you was dead, Mattie. He says he’ll 
see us righted, Mattie. 

Col. G. I’ll do what I can, if you will tell 
me what’s amiss. 

Sus. Oh, everything’s amiss — ever^Thing ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 315 

— Who was that went out, Mattie — this 
minute — as we come in ? 

Mat, Miss Lacordere. 

Sus, Her imperence! Well! I should die 
of shame if I was her. 

Mat, She’s an angel, Susan. There’s her 
basket. I told her to take it away, but she 
would leave it. 

Sus, (^peeping into the basket). Oh, my 1 
Ain’t this nice? You must have a bit, 
Mattie. 

Mat, Not one mouthful. You wouldn’t 
have me, Susan 1 

Sus, I ain’t so peticlar {eating a great 
mouthful). You really must, Mattie. {Goes 
on eating?) 

Col, G. Don’t tease her. We’ll get some- 
thing for her presently. And don’t you eat 
too much — all at once. 

Sus, I think she’d like a chop, sir. — 
There’s that boy. Bill, again 1 — Always when 
he ain’t wanted 1 


Enter Bill. 

Bill {aside to Susan), What’s the row? 
What’s that ’ere gent up to ? I’ve been an’ 
had enough o’ gents. They’re a bad lot. I 
been too much for one on ’em, though. I ha’ 
run him down. — And, Mattie, I’ve found the 
old gen’leman. 

Mat, My father. Bill ? 

Bill, That’s it percise’y! Right as a 
trivet — he is 1 


316 


IP t HAD A FATHER. 


Mat, Susan ! take hold of me. My heart’s 
going again. 

Bill, Lord ! what’s up wi’ Mattie ? She 
do look dreadful. 

Sus, You been an’ upset her, you clumsy 
boy ! Here — run and fetch a sausage or two, 
and a 

Col, G, No, no ! That will never do. 

Sus, Them’s for Bill and me, sir. I was a 
goin’ on, sir. — And, Bill, a chop — a nice chop. 
But Lord ! how are we to cook it, with never 
a fryin’-pan, or a bit o’ fire to set it on ! 

Col, G, You’d never think of doing a chop 
for an invalid in the frying-pan ? 

Sus, Certainly not, sir — we ’ain’t got one. 
Everything’s up the spout an’ over the top. 
Run, Bill. A bit of cold chicken, and two 
pints o’ bottled stout. There's the money the 
gen’leman give me. — ’T ’ain’t no Miss Lacko- 
dare’s, Matlie. 

Bill, I’ll trouble no gen’leman to perwide 
for my family — obleeged all the same, sir. 
Mattie never wos a dab at dewourin’, but I’ll 
get her some’at toothsome. I favours grub 
myself. 

Col, G, I’ll go with you, Bill. I want to 
talk to you. 

Bill, Well, I ’ain’t no objection — so be you 
wants to talk friendly, sir. 

Col, G, Good night. I’ll come and see 
you to-morrow. 

Sus, God bless you, sir. You’ve saved 
both on our lives. I was a goin’ to drown 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 317 

myself, Mattie — I really was this time. 
Wasn’t I, sir ? 

CoL G, Well, you looked like it — that is 
all I can say. You shall do it next time — so 
far as I’m concerned. 

Sus, I won’t never no more again, sir — not 
if Mattie don’t drive me to it. 

Con, (to CoL. Gr.). Come back for me in a 
little while. 

Col, G, Yes, miss. Come, Bill. Exit, 
Bill, All right, sir. I’m a follerin’, as the 
cat said to the pigeon. Exit, 

Sus, I’ll just go and get you a cup o’ tea. 
Mrs. Jones’s kettle’s sure to be a bilin’. 
That’s what you would like. 

Exit, Constance steps aside^ and Susan 
passes without seeing her. 

Mat, Oh ! to be a baby again in my 
mother’s arms ! But it’ll soon be over 
now. 


Constance comes forward. 

Con, I hope you’re a little better now ? 

Mat, You’re very kind, miss ; and I beg 
your pardon for speaking to you as I did. 

Con, Don’t say a word about it. You 
didn’t quite know what you were saying. 
I’m in trouble myself. I don’t know how 
soon I may be worse off than you. 

Mat, Why, miss, I thought you were 
going to be married ! 

Con, No, I am not. 


318 IF I HAD A FATHER. 

Mat, Why, miss, what’s happened. He’s 
never going to play you false — is he ? 

Con, I don’t mean ever to speak to him 
again ? 

Mat, What has he done to offend yon, miss ? 

Con, Nothing. Only I know now I don’t 
like him. To tell you the truth, Mattie, he’s 
not a gentleman. 

Mat, Not a gentleman, miss ! How dare 
you say so ? 

Con, Do you know anything about him ? 
Did you ever see him ? 

Mat, Yes. 

Con, Where? 

Mat, Once at your house. 

Con, Oh ! I remember — that time ! I begin 

to It couldn’t be at the sight of him 

you fainted, Mattie ? — You knew him ? Tell 
me ! tell me ! Make me sure of it. 

Mat, To give you your revenge ! No. It’s 
a mean spite to say he ain’t a gentleman. 

Con, Perhaps you and I have different 
ideas of what goes to make a gentleman. 

Mat, Yery likely. 

Con, Oh ! don’t be vexed, Mattie. I didn’t 
mean to hurt you. 

Mat, Oh ! I dare say ! 

Con, If you talk to me like that, I must go. 

Mat, I never asked you to come. 

Con, Well, I did want to be friendly with 
you. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. 

Mat, {bursting into tears) I beg your 
pardon, miss. I’m behaving like a brute. 


IF I HAD A FATHER, 319 

But you must forgive me ; my heart is 
breaking. 

Con, Poor dear ! (kissing her) So is 
mine almost. Let us be friends. Where’s 
Susan gone ? 

Mat, To fetch me a cup of tea. She’ll be 
back directly. 

Con, Don’t let her say bad words : I can’t 
bear them. I think it’s because I was so 
used to them once — in the streets, I mean — 
not at home — never at home. 

Mat, She don’t often, miss. She’s a good- 
hearted creature. It’s only when hunger 
makes her cross. She don’t like to be 
hungry. 

Con, I should think not, poor girl ! 

Mat, Don’t mind what she says, please. 
If you say nothing, she’ll come all right. 
When she’s spoken her mind, she feels better. 
Here she comes ! 

Re-enter Susan. It begins to grow dark, 

Sus, Well, and who have we got here ? 

Mat, Miss Lacordere, Sukey. 

Sus, There’s no lack o’ dare about her^ to 
come here ! 

^fat, It’s very kind of her to corne, Susan. 

Sus, I tell you what, miss : that parcel was 
stole. It was stole, miss ! — stole from me — 
an’ that angel there a dyin’ in the street ! 

Con, I’m quite sure of it, Susan. I never 
thought anything else. 


320 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Sus, Not but I allow it was a pity, miss! — 
Fm very sorry. But, bless you ! {Lighting a 

candle) — with all your fine clothes ! My ! 

you look like a theayter-queen — you do, miss ! 
If you was to send them up the spout now ! — 
My ! what a lot they’d let you have on that 
silk ! 

Con. The shawl is worth a good deal, I 
believe. It’s an Indian one — all needlework. 

Sus. And the bee-utiful silk ! Laws, miss ! 
just shouldn’t I like to wear a frock like that ! 
I should be hard up before I pledged that I 
But the shawl ! If I was you, miss, I would 
send ’most everything up before that ! — 
things inside, you know, miss — where it don’t 
matter so much. 

Con. (laughing) The shawl would be the 
first thing I should part with. I would 
rather be nice inside than out. 

Sus. Lawk, miss ! I shouldn’t wonder if 
that was one of the differs now! Well, I 
never I It ain’t seen 1 It must be one o’ the 
differs 1 

Con. What differs ? I don’t understand 
you. 

Sus. The differs ’tween girls an’ ladies — ■ 
girls like me an’ real ladies like you. 

Con. Oh, I see ! But how dark it has got 1 
What can be keeping William ? I must go 
at once, or what will my aunt say! Would 
you mind going with me a little bit, Susan ? 

Sus. I’ll go with pleasure, miss. 

Con Just a little way, I mean, till we get 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 321 

to the wide streets. You couldn’t lend me an 
old cloak, could you ? 

Sus. I ’ain’t got one stitch, miss, but what 
I stand up in — ’cep’ it be a hodd glove an’ 
’alf a pocket-’an’kercher. Nobody ’ill know 
you. 

Con. But I oughtn’t to be out dressed like 
this. 

Sus. You’ve only got to turn up your skirt 
over your head, miss. 

Con. (driving up her shirt) I never 
thought of that! 

Sus. Well, I never! 

Con. What’s the matter ? 

Sus. Only the whiteness o’ the linin’ as 
took my breath away, miss. It ain’t no use 
turnin’ of it up : you’ll look like a lady 
whatever you do to hide it. But never mind : 
that ain’t no disgrace so long as you don’t 
look down on the rest of us. There, miss ! 
There you are — fit for a play I Come along ; 
I’ll take care of you. Lawks ! I’m as good 
as a man — I am ! 

Con. Good-bye then, Mattie. 

Mat. Good-bye, miss. God bless you. 

Exeunt. 


END OP ACT ni. 


T 


322 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


ACT IV. 

Scene. — The Studio. 

Enter Col. Gr. Walks about restless and eager. 

Col. G. Thank heaven ! If Bill has found 
Mr. Warren now, Exit. 

Enter Warren. 

War. What can the fellow be up to? 
There’s something odd about him — something 
I don’t like — but it can’t mean mischief when 
he sends for me. Where could Gervaise have 
picked him up ? — Nobody here ? 

Re-enter Col. G. and hurries to him with out- 
stretched hand. 

Col. G. My dear sir ! I am greatly obliged 
to you. This is very kind. 

War. {stepping hack) Excuse me. — I do 
not understand. 

Col. G. I beg your pardon. I ought to 
have explained. 

War. I believe something of the sort is 
necessary. 

Col. G. You are my master’s friend. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 323 

War. I should be proud of the honour. 
Can I be of any service to him ? 

Col. G. I believe I can trust you. I will 
trust you — I am his father. 

War. Whose father ? Belzehub’s ? 

Col. G. Arthur’s — your friend Gervaise’s. 
I am Sir Walter Gervaise. You must help 
me to help him. 

Warren regards him for a moment. 

War. {stiffly) Sir Walter, I owe your son 
much — you nothing yet. I am his friend. 

Col. G. There is not a moment to lose. 
Listen. An old man came about the place 
a few weeks ago, looking for his daughter. 
He has been got out of the way, but I have 
learned where he is : I want you to bring 
him. 

War. I would serve your son blindfold : 
you must excuse me if I wish to understand 
first. 

Col. G. Arthur is in trouble. He has a 
secret. — God forgive me ! — I feared it was a 
bad one. 

War. You don’t know him as I do ! 

Col. G. I know him now — and can help 
him. Only I can’t prove anything yet. I 
must have the old man. I’ve found his 
daughter, and suspect the villain : if I can 
bring the three together, all will come out, 
sure enough. The boy I sent for you will 
take you to the father. He will trust you, 
and come. {Bell rings.) I must go to Arthur 
now. Exit. 


324 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


War, What a strange old fellow ! An 
oflEicer — and disguise himself ! 

Enter Bill. 

Bill, Here you are, sir ! 

War, No vast amount of information in 
that statement, my boy ! 

Bill, Well, sir — here I are, sir. 

War, That is a trifle more to the point, 
though scarcely requiring mention. 

Bill, Then, here we are, sir. 

War, That’ll do — if you know what comes 
next ? 

Bill, I do, sir. 

War, Go on, then. 

Bill, Here goes ! Come along, sir. You’ll 
have to take a bobby, though. 

War, We’ll see about that. You go on. 

Exeunt, 

Enter Gervaise, followed by Col. G. 

Ger, What a time you have been, William ! 

Col, G, I’m sorry, sir. Did you want 
anything ? 

Ger, No. But I don’t like to be left. You 
are the only friend I have. 

Col, G, Thank you, sir. A man must do 
his duty, but it’s a comfort when his colonel 
takes notice of it. 

Ger, Is it all from duty, William? Yet 
why should I look for more ? There was a 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


325 


little girl I tried to do my duty by once 

My head’s rather queer still, William. 

Col, G. Is there nothing to be done, sir ? 

Ger, No ; it’s here — {putting his hand to 
his head) — inside. 

Col, G. I meant about the little girl, sir. — 
I can keep dark as well as another. — When 
there’s anything on a man’s mind, sir — good 
or bad — it’s a relief to mention it. If yon 

could trust me {A pause,) Men have 

trusted their servants and not repented it. 

Ger, No doubt — no doubt. But there is 
no help for me. 

Col, G, You cannot be sure of that, sir. 

Ger, You would help me if you could, I 
believe. 

Col, G, God knows I would, sir — to the 
last drop of my blood. 

Ger, That’s saying much, William. A son 
couldn’t say more — no, nor a father either. 

Col, G, Oh ! yes, he could, sir. 

Ger, And mean it ? 

Col, G, Yes. 

Ger, If I had a father, William, I would 
tell him all about it. I was but two years 
old when he left me. 

Col, G, Then you don’t remember him, 
sir? 

Ger, I often dream about him, and then I 
seem to remember him. 

Col, G, What is he like, sir ? — in your 
dreams, I mean. 

Ger, I never see him distinctly : I try 


326 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


hard sometimes, hut it’s no use. If he would 
but come home ! I feel as if I could bear 
anything then. — But I’m talking like a girl ! 

CoL G. Where is your father, sir ? 

Ger. In India. 

CoL G, A soldier, sir ? 

Ger, Yes. Colonel Gervaise — you must 
have heard of him. Sir Walter he is now. 

CoL G. I’ve heard of him, sir — away in 
the north parts he’s been, mostly, 

Ger, Yes. How I wish he would come 
home ! I would do everything to please him. 
I have it, W illiam ! I’ll go to India. I did 
think of going to Garibaldi— but I won’t — 
I’ll go to India. I must find my father. Will 
you go with me ? 

CoL G, Willingly, sir. 

Ger, Is there any fighting there now ? 

CoL G, Not at present, I believe. 

Ger, That’s a pity. I would have listed in 
my father’s regiment, and then — that is, by 
the time he found me out — he wouldn’t be 
ashamed of me. I’ve done nothing yet. I’m 
nobody yet, and what could he do with a son 
that was nobody — a great man like him ! A 
fine son I should be! A son ought to be 
worthy of his father. Don’t you think so, 
William ? 

CoL G, That wouldn’t be diflScult, sir 1 — I 
mean with most fathers. 

Ger, Ah I but mine, you know, William 1 
—Are you good at the cut and thrust ? 

CoL G, Pretty good, sir, I believe. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


327 


Ger. Then we’ll have a bout or two. I’ve 
got rusty. — Have I said anything odd — or — 
or I mean since I’ve been ill ? 

CoL G, Nothing you need mind, sir. 

Ger, I’m glad of that. — I feel as if — (j)ut- 
ting his hand to his head). William! what 
could you do for a man — if he was your 
friend ? — no, I mean, if he was your enemy ? 

Col. G. I daren’t say, sir. 

Ger. Is the sun shining ? 

Col. G. Yes, sir. It’s a lovely day. 

Ger. What a desert the sky is I — so dreary 
and wide and waste 1 — Ah 1 if I might but 
creep into a hole in a tree, and feel it closing 
about me 1 How comfortable those toads 
must feel ! 

CoL G. {aside). He’s getting light-headed 
again ! I must send for the doctor. Exit. 

Ger. But the tree would rot, and the walls 
grow thin, and the light come through. It 
is crumbling now 1 And I shall have to 
meet her I And then the wedding ! Oh my 
God I {Starts up and paces about the room .) — 
It is the only way 1 My pistols, I think — 
yes. — {Goes to a table, finds his keys, and un- 
locks a case.) — There they are I I may as 
well have a passport at hand 1 {Loading one.) 
— The delicate thunder-tube 1 {Turns it over 
lovingly.) Solitude and silence! One roar 
and then rest ! No — no rest ! — still the 
demon to fight! But no eyes to meet and 
brave! — Who is that in the street? — She is 
at the door — with him ! 


328 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Enter Col. Gt. and seizes his arm, 

Ger, (with a cry). You’ve killed my 
Psyche ! (Goes to the clay^ and lifts the cloth,) 
There’s the bullet-hole through her heart ! 

Col, G, It might have been worse, sir. 

Ger, Worse ! I’ve killed her ! See where 
she flies ! She’s gone ! She’s gone ! (^Bursts 
into tears. Col. Gr. leads him to the couchf 
Thank you, William. I couldn’t help it. 
That man was with her. I meant it for 
myself. 

Col, G, Who did you say was with her ? 

Ger, You mustn’t heed what I say. I am 
mad. (A knock. He starts up.) Don’t let 
them in, William. I shall rave if you do. 

Col. Gr. catches up the pistols and exit 
hurriedly, Ger. throws himself on the 
couch. 


Re-enter Col. G. 

Col. G. (pside). He is in love with her ! 
Everything proves it. My boy ! My boy ! 

Ger, Father! father! — Oh, William! I 
was dreaming, and took you for my father ! 
I must die, William — somehow. There must 
he some way out of this ! The doors can’t all 
be locked. 

Col.^ G, There’s generally a chance to be 
had, sir. There’s always a right and a wrong 
fighting it out somewhere. There’s Garibaldi 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 329 

in the field again ! Die by the hand of an 
enemy — if you will die, sir. 

Ger. {smiling) That I couldn’t, William : 
the man that killed me would be my best 
friend. — Yes — Garibaldi ! — I don’t deserve it, 
though : he fights for his country ; I should 
fight but for death. Only a man doesn’t stop 
when he dies — does he, William ? 

CoL G, I trust not, sir. But he may hope 
to be quieter — that is, if he dies honestly. It’s 
grand for a soldier ! He sweeps on the roar- 
ing billows of war into a soundless haven ! 
Think of that, sir ! 

Ger, Why, William ! how you talk ! — Yes ! 
it would be grand ! On the crest of the war- 
cataract — heading a cavalry charge ! — To- 
morrow, William. I shall be getting stronger 
all the way. We’ll start to-morrow. 

Col, G, Where for, sir ? 

Ger, For Italy — for Garibaldi. You’ll go 
with me ? 

Col. G, To the death, sir. 

Ger, Yes; that’s it — that’s where I’m 
going. But not to-day. Look at my arm : 
it wouldn’t kill a rat ! — You saved my life, 
but I’m not grateful. If I was dead, I might 
be watching her — out of the lovely silence ! — 
My poor Psyche ! 

Col, G. She’s none the worse, sir. The 
pistol didn’t go off. 

Ger. Ah ! — She ought to have fallen to 
pieces — long ago ! You’ve been seeking to 
keep her shroud wet. But it’s no matter. 


330 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Let her go. Earth to earth, and dust to 
dust ! — the law of Nature — and Art too. 

Exit into the house. 

Col. G. {following him) I mustn’t lose 
sight of him. — Here he comes again, thank 
God! 

Catches up a coat, and begins brushing it. 

Re-enter Ger. 

Ger. I don’t like to see you doing that. 

Col. G. Why shouldn’t I serve my own — 
superior, sir ? Anything’s better than serving 
yourself. And that’s what every one does 
who won’t serve other people. 

Ger. You are right. And it’s so cheap. 

Col. G. And so nasty 1 

Ger. Eight again, William! — Right in- 
deed ! — You’re a gentleman ! If there’s any- 
thing I could help you in — anything gone 
wrong, — any friends offended — I’m not alto- 
gether without influence. 

Col. G. {aside) He will vanquish me with 
my own weapons ! 

Ger. But you will go to Garibaldi with me? 

Col. G. I will, sir. 

Ger. And ride by my side ? 

Col. G. Of course. 

Ger. If you ride by me, you will have to 
ride far. 

Col. G. I know, sir. But if you would be 
fit for fighting, you must come and have 
something to eat and drink. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


331 


Ger. All right. A soldier must obey : I 
shall begin by obeying yon. Only mind yon 
keep np with me. Exit, leaning on Col. G. 


Enter Thomas. 

Tho, Th’ dnle a mon be yere ! Aw’re 
main tronbled to get shnt ov they reyvers ! 
Aw’m olez i’ tronble ! Mine’s a gradely yed ! 
it be ! — Hoy ! — Nobory yere ! ’T seems to 
me, honest men be scarce i’ Lonnon. Aw’m 
beawn to believe nobory bnt mo own heighes, 
and mo own ond lass. Exit, 


Re-enter Geryaisb, followed by Col. G. 

Ger, No, William ; I won’t lie down. I 
feel mnch better. Let’s have a bout with the 
foils. 

CoL G, Very well, sir. {Aside.') A little of 
that will go far, I know. {Gets down the 
foils.) 

Ger. And, William, yon must set a block 
up here. I shall have a cut or two at it 
to-morrow. There’s a good cavalry weapon 
up there — next that cast of Davis’s arm. 

Col. G. Suppose your father were to arrive 
just after you had started ! 

Ger. I shouldn’t mind. I don’t want to 
see him yet. I’m such a poor creature ! The 
heart seems to have gone out of me. You 
see, William 


332 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


Enter Mrs. Clifford. 

Ger, Ah ! How do you do, aunt ? 

Mrs, C, What’s this nonsense about Gari- 
baldi, Arthur ? 

Ger, Who told you ? 

Mrs, C, You don’t mean it’s true ? 

Ger, Quite true, aunt. 

Mrs, C, Really, Arthur, you are more of a 
scatterbrain than I took you for ! 

Ger, Don’t say that, aunt. I only take 
after my father. 

Mrs, C, Don’t talk to me of your father ! 
I have no patience with him. A careless 
hard-hearted fellow — not worthy the name of 
a father ! {She glares at Sir Walter.) 

Ger, You may go, William. (Col. G. 
retires slowly,) 

Ger, Aunt, you have been a mother to me ; 
but were you really my mother, I must not 
listen to such words of my father. He has 
good reasons for what he does, though I 
admit there is something in it we don’t 
understand. {Aside,) If I could but under- 
stand how Constance 

Mrs, C, What do you say? What was 
that about Constance ? 

Ger, Oh, nothing, aunt. I was only 
thinking how difficult it is to understand 
people. 

Mrs, C, If you mean Constance, I agree 
with you. She is a most provoking girl. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 333 

Ger. {smiling) I am sorry to bear that, 
aunt. 

Mrs, C, I’m very glad you were never so 
silly as take a fancy to the girl. She would 
have led you a pretty dance ! If you saw 
how she treats that unfortunate Waterfield ! 
But what’s bred in the bone won’t out of the 
flesh. 

Ger, There’s nothing bred in her I would 
have out, aunt. 

Mrs, C, Perhaps she originated her vul- 
garity. That is a shade worse. 

Ger, Vulgarity,, aunt ! I cannot remember 
the meaning of the word when I think of her, 

Mrs, C, If you choose to insult me, Ar- 
thur Exit, 

Ger, It is high time I were gone! If I 
should be called in now to settle matters 
between William! William! — William! 

Enter Col. G. 

Ger, To-morrow, William. Not a word. 
If you will go with me, I shall be glad. If 
you will not, I shall go without you. Exit, 

Col, G, Yes, sir. — I wish Warren were 
here with the old man. I don’t know what 
to do till he comes. 

Enter Constance. 

Con, I thought my aunt was here, William. 

Col, G, No, miss. She was here, but she’s 
gone again. 


334 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Con, Could I see Mr. Gervaise for a 
moment ? 

Col. G. Certainly, miss. I’ll tell him. 

Con. Is he still determined on going, 
William ? 

Col. G. Yes, miss ; — to-morrow, he says. 

Con. To-morrow ! 

Col. G. Yes, miss. I think he means to 
start for Dover in the morning. 

Con. What am I to do ? 

Col. G. What’s the matter, miss ? 

Con. What can I do ? I know he is angry 
with me. I don’t quite know why. I wish 

I had never I can’t help it now. My 

heart will break. ( Weeps.) 

Col. G. Don’t let him go to Dover to- 
morrow, miss. 

Con. He would have listened to me once. 
He won’t now. It’s all so different ! Every- 
thing has gone wrong somehow. 

Col. G. Do try to keep him from going, 
miss. 

Con. He would but think me forward. I 
could bear anything better than have him 
think ill of me. 

Col. G. No fear of that, miss. The danger 
is all the other way. 

Con. What other way, William? 

Col. G. He thinks you don’t care a bit 
about him. 

Exit. Constance drops on the dais^ nearly 
under the veiled Psyche. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


335 


Enter Ger. and stands a moment regarding 
her. 


Ger, Constance. 

Con, {starting up, and flying to him with her 
hands clasped) Arthur ! Arthur ! don’t go. 
I can’t bear you to go. It’s all my fault, but 
do forgive me! Oh, do, do — dear Arthur! 
Don’t go to-morrow. I shall be miserable if 
you do. 

Ger, But why, my why, Constance ? 

Con, I was your Constance once. 

Ger, But why should I not go ? Nobody 
wants me here. 

Con, Oh, Arthur! how can you be so 
cruel ? Can it be that ? Do say some- 

thing. If you won’t say anything, how can 
I know what you are thinking — what you 

wish ? Perhaps you don’t like I would 

— I have — I won’t — Oh, Arthur! do say 
something. 

Ger, I have nothing to say, Constance. 

Con, Then I have lost you — altogether ! I 
dare say I deserve it. I hardly know. God 
help me! What can I have done so very 
wicked ? Oh ! why did you take me out of 
the streets? I should have been used to 
them by this time ! They are terrible to me 
now. No, no, Arthur ! I thank you — thank 
you — with my very soul ! What might I not 
have been by this time ! But I used to lie in 
that corner, and I daren’t now ! 


336 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Enter Col. G. behind. 

It was a happy time, for I had not offended 
you then. Good-bye. Won’t you say one 
word to me ? — You will never see me again. 

She pauses a moment ; then exit weeping — by 
the back door, behind the Psyche, Col. G. 
follows her, 

Ger, How could she love that fellow? 
{Looking up,) Gone? gone ! My Constance! 
My Psyche! I’ve driven her into the wild 
street ! 0 my God 1 William ! William 1 

Constance 1 Which door ? I won’t go, Con- 
stance — I won’t. I will do anything you ask 
me. What was that she said? — Good-bye I 
God in heaven ! — William 1 you idiot 1 where 
are you ? William 1 

He rushes out by the front door. Re-enter 
Col. G. by the back door. 

Col, G, It was lucky I met Bill I He’s 
after her like the wind. That message will 
bring her back, I think. I could trust that 
boy with anything 1 But where is he ? 
{Enter Thomas.) What, friend 1 here at last I 
Thank God 1 Just sit down a moment, will 
you ? {Peeps into the room off the study,) 
He’s not there! I heard him calling this 
moment! Perhaps he’s in the house. — Did 
you leave the door open, sir ? 

Tho, Nay. Th’ dur wur oppen. Aw 
seigh sombory run eawt as aw coorn oop. 

Col, G, My boy ! my boy ! It will kill 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 337 

him! — Stop here till I come back. {Rushes 
out,) 

Tho, Aw connot stop. Aw’m tired enough, 
God knows, to stop anywheeres ; mo yed goes 
reawnd and reawnd, an’ aw’d fain lie mo 
deawn. But aw mun be gooin’. Nobory can 
tell what may be coomin to mo Mattie. Aw 
mnn go look, go look 1 Ha ! ha ! they 
couldn’t keep mo, owd mon as aw wur 1 But 
diw wish aw bed a word wi’ th’ mon first. 

Enter Warren. 

War, {aside) This must be the old fellow 
himself! Here he is after all! {Peeps into 
the room.) 

Tho, Theer be nobory theer, sir. Th’ 
maister’s run eawt, and th’ mon after him. 

War. Run out ! 

Tho, Aw niver says what aw donnot mane. 
An’ aw’m glad yo’re theer, sir ; for William 
he towd mo to stay till he coom back ; but 
aw’ve not geet so micb time to spare ; and so 
be’s yo’re a friend ov th’ maister’s, yo’ll 
mebbe mind th’ shop a smo’ bit. Aw mun 
goo {goinr). 

War. i say, old man — your name’s Thomas 
Pearson — ain’t it ? 

Tho, Yigh. Aw yer. But hea cooms to 
to knaw mo name ? 

War. I know all about you. 

Tho. Ivvery body knaws ivvery body yere ! 
Aw connot stur a fut fur folks as knaws mo, 
and knaws mo name, and knaws what aw be 


338 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


after. Lonnon is a dreedfu’ plaze. Aw mim 
geet mo lass to whoam. Yo’ll mind th’ shop 
till th’ maister cooms back. Groodneet {going). 

War, {stopping him) They want you here 
a bit. You’d better stop. The man will be 
back directly. You’re too suspicious. 

Tho, Nea, maister, thae’rt wrung theer. 
Aw’ve trusted too mich — a theawsand times 
too mich. 

War, You trusted the wrong people, then. 

Tho, It taks no mak o’ a warlock to tell 
mo that, maister. It’s smo’ comfort, noather. 

War, Well now, you give me a turn, and 
hear what I’ve got to say. 

Tho, Yo’re o’ tarred wi’ th’ same stick. 
Ivvery body maks gam ov th’ poor owd mon ! 
Let me goo, maister. Aw want mo chylt, 
mo Mattie ! 

War, You must wait till Mr. Gervaise’s 
man comes back. 

Tho, {despairingly) 0 Lord Th’ peack ov 
sunbrunt lies they ha’ been tellin’ me sin’ aw 
coom yere ! — childer an o’ ! 

War, Have patience, man. You won’t 
repent it. 

Tho. What mun be, mun. Aw connot 
ha’ patience, but aw con stop. Aw’d rayther 
goo, though. Aw’m noan sorry to rest 
noather. {Sits down on the dais.) 

Enter Bill. 

War, Here, boy ! Don’t let the old man 
go till some one comes. Exit. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 339 

Bill, All right, sir ! Hillo, daddy ! There 
you are ! Thank Grod ! 

Tho, What fur, boy ? Wull he gie mo mo 
Mattie again — dosto think ? 

Bill, That he will, daddy ! You come 
along, an’ you’ll know a honest boy next time. 
— I can’t till I see Mr. William, though. 

Tho, Iv thae manes th’ maister’s mon yere, 
he’s run eawt. An’ aw connot goo witho. 
Aw’m keepin’ th’ shop till he coom back. 
An’ aw dunnot mich care to goo witho. Aw 
dunnot mich trust tho. Th’ Lord have a care 
ov mo ! Aw dunnot knaw which to trust, 
and which not to trust. But aw mun wait 
for maister William, as yo co’ him. 

Bill, All right, daddy ! — Don’t you stir 
from here till I come back — not for nobody — 
no, not for Joseph ! 

Tho, Aw dunnot knaw no Joseph. 

Bill, 111 soon let you see I’m a honest 
boy ! As you can’t go to Mattie, I’ll bring 
Mattie to you : see if I don’t ! An’ if she 
ain’t the right un. I’ll take her back, and 
charge ye nuffin for carriage. Can’t say 
fairer than that, daddy ! 

Tho, Bless tho, mo boy ! Dosto mane it 
true? 

Bill, Yes — an’ that you’ll see, afore you’re 
an ’alf an hour older, daddy. When Mr. 
William comes, you say to him, “ Bill’s been. 
— All right.” 

Tho, Aw dunnot like secrets, lad. What 
don yo mane ? Ivvery body seems to mane 
something, and nobory to say it. 


340 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Bill, Never you mind, daddy ! ‘‘ Bill’s 

been. — All right.” That’s your ticket. I’m 
off. Exit, 

Thomas gets up^ and walks ahout^ murmur- 
ing to himself, A knock at the door, 
Tho, Somebory after mo again ! Aw’ll 
geet eawt ov th’ way. {Goes behind the 
Psyche.) 


Enter Waterfield. 

Wat, Nobody here ! I am unlucky. “ Not 
at home,” said the rascal, — and grinned, by 
Jove ! I’ll be at the bottom of this. There’s 
no harm in Gervaise. He’s a decent fellow. 
{Knocks at the door of Ger.’s room.) I won’t 
leave the place till I’ve set things right — not 
if I’ve got to give him a post-obit for five 
thousand — I won’t ! — Nobody there ? {Looks 
in,) No. Then I’ll go in and wait. Exit, 

Tho, {peeping from behind the Psyche), 
That’s the villain ! Lord o’ mercy ! that’s 
the villain ! If aw’re as strung as aw’m owd, 
aw’d scrunch his yed — aw would ! Aw’m 
sure it’s th’ mon. He kep eawt ov mo way — 
but aw seigh him once. 0 Lord, keep mo 
hands off ov him. Aw met kill him. Aw’m 
sartin sure ov him when aw see him. Aw’ll 
not goo nigh him till somebory cooms — cep’ 
he roons away. Aw’m noan fleyed ov him, 
but aw met not be able to keep mo howd ov 
him. Oh, mo Mattie ! mo Mattie ! to leave 
thi owd faither for sich a mak ov a mon as 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 341 

yon ! But yere cooms somebory moor. {Goes 
behind the Psyche.) 

Enter Mrs. Clifford. 

Mrs. (7. No one here ? She can never be 
in his room with him ! ( Opens the door.) 

Oh ! Mr. Waterfield ! You’re here — are you ? 

Wat. {coming to the door). Mrs. Clifford! 
This is indeed an unexpected pleasure 1 

Mrs. C. Have you got Constance with you 
there ? 

Wat. I’ve no such good fortune. 

Mrs. C. Where is she, then ? 

Wat. At home, I presume. 

Mrs. C. Indeed she is not. I must speak 
to Arthur. 

Wat. He’s not here. 

Mrs. C. Where’s my — his man, then ? 

Wat. Taken himself off to the public- 
house, I suppose. There's nobody about. 
Odd — ain’t it ? 

Mrs. C. I’ll go and see. Exit into the house. 
Wat. What can be the row ! there is some 
row. Exit into the room. 

Enter Ger., supported by Col. G. 

Col. G. Thank God ! Thank God 1 
Ger. But where is she ? I shall go mad if 
you’ve told me a lie. 

Col. G. I saw her, and sent a messenger 
after her. We shall have news of her pre- 
sently. Do have a little patience, sir. 


342 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Ger, How can I have patience? I’m a 
brute — a mean, selfish devil ! If that fellow 
Waterfield was to horse- whip me — I should 
let him. 

Tho, {coming forward). Theer wur that 
yung chap yere a while agoo, and he said aw 
wur to say to Maister William — what wur it 
aw’re to say ? — Yigh — it wur — “ Bill’s been. 
O’reet.” 

Col. G. There, sir ! I told you so. Do sit 
down. I’ll go after her. 

Ger. I will. I will. Only make haste. 
{Stands staring at the Psyche.) 

Tho. Th’ boy said he’d be yere direckly. 

Col. G. You sit down. I’ll be with you 
presently. 

Tho. {retiring behind the Psyche), Aw’re 
noan likely to goo, maister. 

Enter Mrs. C. Crosses to room door. Enter 
Waterfield. They talk. 

Ger. William ! I don’t want them. {Re~ 
treats towards the Psyche.) 

Col. G. Sit here one moment, sir. {Leads 
him to the dais. Advances to Mrs. C.) 

Mrs. C, (trying to pass him). Arthur, what 
can ? 

^ Col. G. (intercepting her). Let him rest a 
hit, ma’am, if you please. He’s been out for 
the first time. 

Mrs. C. At night ! and in a fog ! A pretty 
nurse you are ! Poor boy ! 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


343 


Coh G, Mr. Waterfield, sir, would you 
mind stepping into the room again for a 
moment? {ExitYlA.^,) Mrs. Clifford, ma’am, 
would you please get a glass of wine for 
master ? Exit Mrs. 0 . into the house. 

Ger, William! William! 

Col. G. Yes, sir. 

Ger. Send him away. Don’t let him stop 
there. I have nothing to say to him. 

Col. G. He shan’t trouble you, sir. I’ll 
take care of that. {Goes behind the Psyche to 
Thomas, hut keeps watching the door of the 
room.) — Did you see the man that went in 
there just now ? 

Tho. (with anxiety). He winnot joomp eawt 
ov th’ window, dosto thenk, lad ? 

Re-enter Mrs. C. with wine. G-er. drinks. 

Col. G. Why should he do that ? Do you 
know anything about him ? 

Tho. Aw do. 

Col. G. Has he seen you here ? 

Tho. No. Aw’re afeard he’d roon away, 
and aw keepet snoog. 

Col. G. I needn’t ask who it is, then ? 

Tho. Yo needn’t, lad. 

Enter Waterfield. 

Tho. Mo conscience! he'll pike eawt afoor 
aw geet howd on him! {Rushes out and 
seizes Wat.) 


344 


IP I HAD A FATHER. 


Enter Mattie and Bill. 

Tho, Thae’rt a domned villain ! Wheer’s 
mo Mattie ? 

Waterfield knocks Thomas dmm. 

Bill, 0 Lord ! the swell’s murdered old 
daddy ! 

All hut Ger. rush together. Colonel Ger- 
VAiSE seizes Waterfield. Mattie 
throws herself on her knees beside 
Thomas and lifts his head. 

Mat, Father ! father ! Look at me ! It’s 
Mattie ! — your own wicked Mattie ! Look at 
her once, father dear ! {Lays down his head in 
despair^ and rises,) Who struck the good old 
man ? 

Bill, He did — the swell as give me the 
gold sov. 

Mat, Mr. Watkins ! 

Wat, 1 haven’t the honour of the gentle- 
man’s acquaintance. I’m not Mr. Watkins. 
Am I now ? {to Col. G.). Ha ! ha ! — Let go, 
I say. I’m not the man. It’s all a mistake, 
you see. 

Col, G, In good time. I might make a 
worse. Watkins mayn’t be your name, but 
Watkins is your nature. 

Wat, Damn your insolence! Let me go, 
I tell you ! {Struggles threatening.) 

Col, G, Gently, gently, young man 1 — If I 
give your neckcloth a twist now 1 

Mat, Yes, there is a mistake — and a sad 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


345 


one for me ! A wretch that would strike an 
old man ! Indeed you are not what I took 
you for. 

Wat, You hear the young woman ! She 
says it’s all a mistake. — My good girl, I’m 
sorry for the old gentleman ; but he oughtn’t 
to behave like a rufiSan. Eeally, now, you 
know, a fellow can’t stand that sort of thing ! 
A downright assault! I’m sorry I struck 
him, though — devilish sorry 1 I’ll pay the 
damage with pleasure. {Puts his hand in his 
pocket,) 

Mat, (turning away) And not a gentle- 
man 1 (^Kneels hy Thomas and weeps,) 

Tho, (^feebly), Dunnot greight, Mattie, mo 
chylt. Aw’m o’ reet. Let th’ mon goo. 
What’s he to tho or mo ? — By th’ mass 1 aw’m 
strung enough to lick him yet (trying to rise^ 
but falling back), Eigh 1 eigh ! mo owd 
boans ’ud rayther not. It’s noan blame sure 
to an owd mon to fo’ tired o’ feightin I 

Mat, (taking his head on her lap). Father 1 
father ! forgive me ! I’m all yours. — I’ll go 
home with you, and work for you till I drop. 

0 father! how could I leave you for him? 

1 don’t care one bit for him now^ — I don’t 
indeed. You’ll forgive me — won’t you, 
father ? (Sobs.) 

Tho. Aw wull, aw do, mo Mattie. Coom 
whoam — coom whoam. 

Mat. Will mother forgive me, father? 

Tho, Thi mother, chylt ? Hoo’s forgiven 
tho lung afoor — ivver so lung agoo, chylt J 


346 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Thi mother may talk leawd, but her heart 
is as soft as parritch. — Thae knows it, 
Mattie. 

Wat. All this is very interesting, — only 
you see it’s the wrong man, and I can’t 
say he enjoys it. Take your hand off my 
collar — will you ? I’m not the man, I tell 
you ! 

Bill. All I says is — it’s the same swell as 
guv me the skid to find her. I’ll kiss the 
book on that ! 

Ger. {coming forward). Mr. Waterfield, on 
your honour, do you know this girl ? 

Wat. Come ! you ain’t goin’ to put me to 
my catechism ! 

Ger. You must allow appearances are 
against you. 

Wat. Damn your appearances ! What do 
I care ? 

Ger. If you will not answer my question, I 
must beg you to leave the place. 

Wat. My own desire ! Will you oblige me 
by ordering this bull-dog of yours to take his 
paws off me ? What the devil is he keeping 
me here for ? 

Col. G. I’ve a great mind to give you in 
charge. 

Wat. The old codger assaulted me first. 

Col. G. True ; but the whole affair would 
come to light. That’s what I would have. 
Miss Pearson, what am I to do with this 
man ? 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


347 


Knter Susan at the hack door. Behind her^ 
Constance peeps in. 

Mat. Let him go. — Father! Father! 
(Jvisses him.) 

Sus. That can never be Mattie’s gentle- 
man, sure-ly ! Hm ! I don’t think much of 
him. I knew he had ugly eyes ! I told you 
so, Mattie ! I wouldn’t break my heart for 
him — no, nor for twenty of him — 1 wouldn’t ! 
He looks like a drowned cat. 

Wat. What the devil have you got to do 
with it ? 

Sus. Nothing. You shut up. 

Wat. Well, I’m damned if I know whether 
I’m on my head or my heels. 

Sus. ’Tain’t no count which. 

Bill {aside to Col. G.). She’s at the back 
door, Mr. William. 

Col. G. Who is. Bill ? Miss Lacordere ? 

Bill. Eight you air ! 

Col. G. hastens to the door. peeps in 

and draws hack. Col. G. follows her. 
Waterfield approaches Mattie. 

Wat. Miss Pearson, if that’s 

Mat. I don’t know you — don’t even know 
your name. 

Wat. {looking round). You hear her say it ! 
She don’t know me ! 

Mat. Could you try and rise, father? I 
want to get out of this. There’s a lady here 
says I’m a thief ! 


348 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Tlio, Nea, that she connot say, Mattie ! 
Thae cooms ov honest folk. Aw’ll geet oop 
direckly. {Attempts to rise,) Eigh ! eigh ^ 
aw connot ! aw connot ! 

Mrs, C, If I have been nnjnst to you, Miss 
Pearson, I shall not fail to make amends. 

Sus, It’s time you did then, ma’am. You’ve 
murdered her, and all but murdered me. 
That’s how your little bill stands. 

Ger, {to Wat.) Leave the place, Mr. 
Waterfield. 

Wat, You shall answer for this, Gervaise. 

Ger, Leave the study at once. 

Wat, Tut ! tut ! I’ll make it up to them. 
A hank note’s a good plaster. 

Bill, Pleasir, shall I run and fetch a 
bobby ? I likes to see a swell wanted. 

Ger, You hold your tongue. {Retires to 
the dais and sits down, Miis. C. follows him.) 

Wat, {taking out his pocket-book,, and ap- 
proaching I didn’t think you’d have 

served me so, Mattie ! Indeed I didn’t ! It’s 
not kind after what’s been between you and 
me. (Mattie rises and stands staring at him.) 
You’ve ruined my prospects — you have ! But 
I don’t want to bear malice : take that. — Old 
times, you know ! — Take it. You’re wel- 
come. {Forces the note on her. She steps 
hack. It drops.) 

Mat. This is a humiliation ! Will nobody 
take him away ? 

Sus. {rushing at him). You be off! An’ 
them goggle eyes o’ yours, or /’ll goggle 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


349 


’em! I can’t bear tlie sight on ’em. 1 
should never ha’ taken you for a gentleman. 
You don’t look it. You slope, I say ! 
{Hustles him.) 

Waterfield picks up the note^ and 
exit. 

Mat. (bursting into tears) Father! father! 
don’t hate me ; don’t despise me. 

Thomas tries to get up,, hut falls hack. 

Bill. Don’t be in no hurry, Daddy. There’s 
none but friends here now — ’cep’ the old 
lady ; — she do look glum. 

Sus. I’ll soon settle her hash 1 

Mat. Susie 1 Susie 1 Don’t — there’s a dear ! 

Sus. What business has she here then 1 
She’s not a doin’ of nothink. 

Mat. Don’t you see she’s looking after the 
poor gentleman there ? 

Ger. William 1 — William 1 — Gone again ! 
What a fellow he is 1 The best servant in the 
world, but always vanishing 1 Call your 
James — will you, aunt? We must have the 
old man put to bed. But the poor girl looks 
the worse of the two ! She can have the 
spare room, and William can sleep on the 
sofa in mine. 

Mrs, C. I’ll see to it. 

Exit. Ger. goes towards Thomas. 

The. Coom whoam — coom whoam, Mattie 1 
Thi mother, hoo’s cryin’ her eighes eawt to 
whoam. 

Mat. I’ll run for a doctor first, father. 

Tho. No, no, chylt 1 Aw’re only a bit 


350 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


stonned, like. Aw’ll be o’ reet in a smo’ bit. 
Aw dunnot want no doctor. Aw’m a coorain’ 
reawnd. 

Ger, Neither of you shall stir to-night. 
Your rooms will be ready in a few minutes. 

Mat, Thank you, sir ! I don’t know what 
I should have done with him. — Susan, you 
wouldn’t mind going home without me ? 
You know Miss Lacordere 

Ger, Miss Lacordere ! What do you know 
of her ? 

Mat, Oh, dear ! Oh, dear ! I oughtn’t to 
have mentioned her. But my poor head ! 

Ger, What of Miss Lacordere ? For God’s 
sake, tell me. 

Enter Mrs. C. with James. 

Sus, Oh, nothing, sir ! nothing at all ! 
Only Miss Lacordere has been good to us — 
which it’s more than can be said for every- 
body ! {Scowls at Mrs. C. James 'proceeds to 
lift Thomas. She flies at him,) Put the old 
gentleman down, you sneakin’ reptile ! How 
many doors have you been a hearkenin’ at 
since mornin’ — eh, putty-lump ? You touch 
the old man again, and I’ll mark you ! 
Here, Bill ! I’ll take his head — you take 
his feet. We’ll carry him between us like a 
feather. 

Mat, 0 Susan ! do hold your tongue. 

Sus, It’s my only weapon, my dear. If I 
was a man — see if I’d talk then. 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 351 

James, It’s a providence you ain’t a man, 
young woman ! 

Sus, Right you are ! Them’s my werry 
motives. I ain’t a makin’ of no complaint on 
that score, young Plush ! I wouldn’t be a 
man for — no, not for — not even for sich a 
pair o’ calves as yourn ! 

Sus. and Bill carry Tho. out. Mat. fol- 
lows, Ger. is going after them, 

Mrs, C, Don’t you go, Arthur. They can 
manage quite well. I will go if you like. 

Ger, They know something about Con- 
stance. 

Mrs, G, Pray give yourself no anxiety 
about her. 

Ger, What do you mean, aunt ? 

Mrs, C, I will be responsible for her. 

Ger, Where is she then ? {Exit Mrs. C.) 
William ! — If he doesn’t come in one minute 
more, I’ll go after her myself. Those girls 
know where she is. I am as strong as a 
giant. — 0 God ! All but married to that 
infamous fellow ! — That he should ever have 
touched the tip of one of her fingers ! What 
a sunrise of hope ! Psyche may yet fold her 
wings to my prayer ! William ! William ! 
— Where can the fellow be ? 

Enter Col. G. in uniform and star, leading 
Constance. 

Ger, (flurrying to meet them). Cor: stance! 
Constance 1 forgive me. Oh my God 1 You 
will when you know all. 


352 ' 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


Col. G, She knows enough for that already, 
my boy, or she wouldn’t be here. Take her 
— and me for her sake. 

Ger. What ! who ? Constance ! — What 

does it all mean? — It must be — can it be — 
my father ? — William — It is William ! — 
William my father ! — 0 father ! father ! 
{throvnng his arms about him) it was you all 
the time then ! 

Col. G, My boy ! my boy ! There ! — take 
Constance, and let me go. I did want to do 

something for you — but There ! I’m 

too much ashamed to look at you in my 
own person. 

Ger. (kneeling). Father ! father ! don’t talk 
like that ! 0 father ! my father ! 

Col. G. (raising him). My boy ! my boy ! 
I wanted to do something for you — tried hard 
— and was foiled. — I doubly deserved it. I 
doubted as well as neglected you. But Grod 
is good. He has shamed me, and saved you. 

Ger. By your hand, lather. 

Col. G. No — by his own. It would all 
have come right without me. I was un- 
worthy of the honour, my boy. But I was 
allowed to try ; and for that I am grateful. — 
Arthur, I come to you empty-handed — a 
beggar for your love. 

Ger. How dare you say that, father? — 
Empty-handed — bringing me her and your- 
self — all I ever longed for ! — my father and 
my Psyche ! Father, thank you. The poor 
word must do its best. I thank you with my 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


35 ? 


very soul. — How shall I bear my happiness ! 
— Constance, it was my father all the time ! 
Did you know it ? Serving me like a slave ! 
— humouring all my whims ! — watching me 
night and day ! — and then briuging me 

Con. Your own little girl, Arthur. But 
why did you not tell me ? 

Ger. Tell you what, darling? 

Con. That — that — that you Oh ! you 

know what, Arthur ! 

Ger. How could I, my child, with that ! 

— Shall I tell you now ? 

Con. No, no ! I am too happy to listen 
— even to you, Arthur ! But he should never 

have I did find him out at last. If 

I had but known you did not like him ! 
(hiding her face.) 

Ger. (embracing his father) Father ! father ! 
I cannot hold mv happiness ! And it is all 
your doing ! 

Col. G. No, I tell you, my boy ! I was but 
a straw on the tide of things. I will serve 
you yet though. I will be your father yet. 

Bill (aside). Fathers ain’t all bad coves! 
Here’s two on ’em — good sort of old Jacobs 
— both on ’em. Shouldn’t mind much if I 
had a father o’ my own arter all ! 

Qervaise turns to Constance — then glances 
at the Psyche. Col. Gervaise removes 
the sheet. Gervaise leads Constance 
to the chair on the dais — turns from her 
to the Psyche, and begins to work on the 
clay, glancing from the one to the other 

2 A 


354 


IF I HAD A FATHER. 


— the next moment leaves the Psyche^ 
and seats himself on the dais at Con- 
stance’s feet, loohing up in her face. 
Col. Gervaise stands regarding them 
fixedly. Slow distant music. Bill is 
stealing away. 

Curtain falls. 


THE END, 













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